"New Zealand, Cemetery Transcriptions 1835–2006". Errors: Unable to load custodian link
Many images from this collection cannot be viewed. In the image viewer, specific pages encounter an error: Image restricted Unable to load custodian link. These images are pages of transcriptions; some pages are restricted, but adjacent pages from the same image group and cemetery transcription are accessible. The distribution of inaccessible pages seems to be random. Sometimes, the majority of pages shown in the thumbnail toolbar at the bottom of the image viewer window have a padlock and those pages cannot be viewed. In other areas of the collection, the majority of thumbnails have previews and usually they can be viewed. However, I have also found at least one thumbnail which has a thumbnail but it cannot be viewed. This screenshot shows that example:
There are records from this collection that appear as profile hints, but the records cannot be accessed (We're unable to show this record. This record can only be displayed on certain accounts. FamilySearch must honor the agreements we have with our partners, record owners, and internal policies.) I don't know if these particular records are on an inaccessible image or not.
My questions are:
- Why are some pages inaccessible, even though adjacent pages from the same custodian are accessible?
- Are the inaccessible hint records likely to be on one of these inaccessible images?
Answers
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I can partly answer my second question. This profile has a source from the collection which I have attached in the source linker, but which gives me an error when I try to look at the image:
Unable to load custodian link.
In the profile's sources tab, I see this:
Indeed, I am logged in but, unfortunately, the image is not visible to me.
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So, two days later, when I look at the profile whose source featured in the screenshot I posted a couple of days ago, things have changed. Now the right-hand side displays "Image Unavailable":
The current timestamp on the collection is 1 February 2026. ("New Zealand, Cemetery Transcriptions, 1835-2006." Database. FamilySearch. https://FamilySearch.org : 1 February 2026. New Zealand Society of Genealogists, Auckland.)
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@JulianBrown38 It would help me, help you if post a link to your original screen. From there I will follow your path and try to duplicate what you are seeing.
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We have experienced occasionally this problem of “checkerboard” restriction on a film when new rights were being put in place. It is resolved by running a reevaluation. That addresses your first query. The reason for removing collection access, however, is unclear and may relate to either 2006 date coverage or contractual changes.
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@m how Unfortunately, I can't recall exactly how I got to the image that I was looking at when I saw the message in my original post. It would have been by clicking on a VIEW ORIGINAL DOCUMENT link like the one I showed in the second screenshot I posted, but not for that particular source. It would have been for a hint for a source image which, because of the checkerboard effect, was visible to me at the time. Then, because I wanted to go to the first pages of that burial or cremation list, I tried to navigate to preceding pages. When I hit a restricted page, I got that error (Image restricted Unable to load custodian link).
@SerraNola As to the reason for the removal of the collection access, I can only say that much of the data in the collection appears to originate from New Zealand Society of Genealogists transcriptions of burial and cremation registers. Many of those transcriptions were available on microfiche in public libraries as long as 25 years ago.
As things stand now, I have found literally hundreds of hints for this collection over the last couple of days, but each one that I clicked doesn't even allow me to see the index data, let alone try to view the image. They all now result in that other bugbear message (We are unable to display…). Perhaps this is a result of the running of a "reevaluation", which might be evidenced by the very recent timestamp on the collection. A handful (about 4) of those hints had been presented in the Record Hints section of my home page over the last couple of days. When I checked again a couple of minutes ago, there were about 50; all the new ones are for this collection. I've checked the profiles for a small number of those; they all result in We are unable to display… messages.
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@JulianBrown38 The reevaluation simply picks up all the artifacts still visible and removes permissions. When an image group is assigned "No Access" it trumps what is on each individual image. The access permissions for this entire collection have been set to No Access, and we have not received any additional information from our legal team.
A secondary problem is the number of restricted Record Hints. Our hinting system generally blocks restrictions, with only a few exceptions. Engineers are investigating this issue.
As always, thanks for your good feedback.
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About 15 hours after my previous post (when I had about 50 hints), that has now reduced to 12 without my doing anything. 10 of the remaining hints are for this collection, but the system also seems to have lost about 6 hints from other collections. I had retained those 6 hints deliberately, some for several months, because they were of particular interest to me but would have required more investigation before I could attach, dismiss or ignore them.
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