New FamilySearch Historical Records Database - Norway Church Records

Gordon Collett

I haven't seen any notice about this new database which was released just this past August 4th, maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but I stumbled across it accidentally the other day:

Norway Church Books, 1815-1930

It contains 17,901,159 records of birth, confirmations, and deaths. The description states "This collection is part of a collaborative agreement involving FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, and the National Archive of Norway." These are the same searchable indexes that are found on Digitalarkivet.

Pros:

• This is a massive index.
• It covers the gaps in the older FamilySearch indexes of birth and marriages.
• The FamilySearch search system is much easier to use than the Norwegian Archives search system, giving a very efficient way to find desired records.
• The entries can be attached as sources to Family Tree entries.

Cons:

• Although the camera icon is shown next to the database name as if images are attached, the records state that images are not available, at least not at home. I have not checked at a Family History Center. This is not much of an issue, however, since all the images are freely available at Digitalarkivet.
• The index has severe problems due to both horrible indexing and bad post processing and it will be even more important than with other indexes I have used to stress to everyone that information in the index should never be trusted but absolutely must be checked against the original images. This is also true when using the search system on Digitalarkivet.
• It does not appear to be included in the Hint system yet but due to the problems in the index, I have to wonder if it ever should be.
• The search by exact place does not work properly. For example, the search for my example below was set to match Stord exactly for place but only 4 of the 8 results had the word Stord anywhere in the record.
• The christenings are set as baptisms so the Source Linker creates a baptism event under Other Information rather than a christening event under Vitals when attaching these records.

Here is an example that shows examples of these problems. This is the record:

This is how it appears in the search results:

And in the index itself:

In this birth record:

• The mother's name was indexed as Tjahsdatt rather than the relatively obviously correct name of Isaksdatt.
• The year at the top of the page was included for the christening but not for the birth, which is fine, but causes the birth to strangely appear as Month, Year, in the search result. It does display correctly as Day Month in the actual index display.
• The parish record is for the prestegjeld of Stord which covers both Stord sogn and Valestrand sogn. The original place name is a strange combination of both sogn names into something that does not exist, "Stord, Valestrand, Hordaland." Post-processing made things even worse because the original nonsensical place name was standardized to Valestrand Cemetery, Stord, Hordaland which is a place, but this child was certainly not christened in the cemetery. Also, the original record states he was christened at "hoved Kirken" which was Stord church, not Valestrand church so even if the post-processing had changed the name to Valestrand sogn, Stord prestegjeld, Hordaland, it would have been incorrect because the event was at Stord sogn, Stord prestegjeld, Hordaland. In this particular situation, the only correct event place derivable from the indexing would be Stord prestegjeld, Hordaland, that is, Stord, Hordaland.

My wife has a friend in Norway who has told her that he is working as a volunteer with the Norwegian Archives to correct the indexing. He is doing several batches per week. One hopes that these corrections will get passed on to the FamilySearch copy of the indexes. But the post-processing errors FamilySearch will have to take care of.

Overall, I do think this will be a great new tool despite its flaws. But anyone working with beginners in Norwegian research will have to make those flaws very clear and stress over and over the need to use the index as just a finding aid, to always go to the original record, and to be very skeptical of the spelling of names and places in the index.

(Dear Moderator or Group Leader: I think this is an important enough event to either pin this post at the top of the discussions here or to create your own announcement about the release of this database and put it in the Announcement section.)