Attach Historical Records to FamilySearch Family Tree

In Search Gets Major Feature Enhancements posted today on the FamilySearch Blog, Robert Kehrer announced several enhancements for interaction between the FamilySearch Historical Records and the FamilySearch Family Tree.

One of the most important and useful, in my view, is the ability to attach historical records to a person in the FamilySearch Family Tree. The blog post says:

"FamilySearch has a goal of properly linking each of the persons found in the world’s historical records to the Family Tree. To help facilitate accurate person-to-person linking, an “Attach to Family Tree” button is now available on each person’s details page in historical records.

"When you click the button, you will see a list of persons in the Family Tree that match the person on the record. You may also choose a name from your history list, showing the people you most recently viewed in the Family Tree, or you can initiate a search of the Family Tree. Once you have identified the correct person in the Family Tree, click Attach to create a link to the source on the person’s page in the Family Tree, add the source link to the source box, and provide a reason for making the connection."

That sounds easy - let's see how it works:

1)  I found the 1880 U.S. Census record for the Harvey E. Carringer family on FamilySearch.  My great-grand uncle, Harvey Edgar Carringer, was listed as the first match:

2)  After clicking on the link for the Harvey E. Carringer match, the page for Harvey Carringer opened with information about him:

Note the bright blue "Attach to Family Tree" button on the right-hand side of the page.

3)  I clicked on the bright blue "Attach to Family Tree" button and a popup window appeared:

The pop-up window has two tabs - "Possible Matches" and "History List."  If the person is not listed, the user can click on the "Search Family Tree" link.

4)  Harvey Edgar Carringer was the only matching person on the list, so I clicked on the bright blue "Select" button in the popup box above.  Another popup box appeared in the right side of the screen::

The "Is This Your Person" popup box opened, and since it was my person, I typed in a reason to attach the source.

5)  I clicked the bright blue "Attach" button on the popup screen, and was back to Harvey E. Carringer's census page:

Note that, instead of the bright blue "Attach to Family Tree" button in the right-hand frame, there is no a "View In Family Tree" link.  That means that this source was attached to the person in the Family Tree.

6)  I went to the FamilySearch Family Tree and found the profile for Harvey Edgar Carringer (top of page shown below):

If you look carefully in the "Latest Changes" area of the right-hand frame, it says "Source Attached" "22 July 2013" "by randyseaver1."  That's what I just added (this was maybe two minutes after I did it).

Further down the page is the "Sources" area of Harvey Edgar Carringer's profile:

The 1880 U.S. Census Record is listed in the "Sources" area of the person's profile.

7)  That is really easy to do.  It is much easier than using the "My Source Box" feature!!  One really neat feature is that a user can add the source for the whole family, one person at a time, without leaving the Historical Record page.  

In my humble opinion, this is a significant enhancement to the FamilySearch website - it ties the records to persons in the Family Tree, and enables attaching a source citation to a person in the Family Tree.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/07/attach-historical-records-to.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver