FamilySearch Standard Finder - Post 2

In FamilySearch Standard Finder - Post 1, I covered the Name, Date and Place tabs in the FamilySearch Standard Finder website. The most useful part of the Standard Finder is the geocoding of almost any place name.

There are two other tabs on the Standard Finder page - the "Preview" tab and the "Resources" tab. I clicked on the "Preview" tab and saw a field to enter a location, so I put [chula vista] in the field:



As you can see, all of the locations with [chula vista] in the Standard Finder database shows in a dropdown list. I clicked on the top one, and saw:




As you can see, there is "standardized text" for my selection. This function is, of course, the basis for the dropdown list in the location field on the FamilySearch Record Search Pilot site.

The "Resources" tab opens with (two screens below):

The "Resources" page says:

"View maps with clickable links to the holdings of the Family History Library Catalog. There are three options to view the data:

* Google Earth,

* Maps.Google.Com,
* ArcReader from ESRI.

"Google Earth can be downloaded for free from the Google Earth site. Google Earth can display state and county borders. Google Maps does not require any download, just use the import feature of My Maps. Google Maps only displays state borders. ArcReader can be downloaded for free from the ESRI site. It can display state, county and township borders."


At the present time, the links for Google Earth and Google Maps go to Google Earth.

Click on the "View Sample Screens" and the "Tips and Instructions" links to see what this is supposed to look like. Apparently, there will be links on the displayed map to take users to the Family History Library Catalog for a specific town, county or state.

Why is this Standard Finder important? How will it be used on the soon-to-be-unveiled "New" FamilySearch.org website? We'll discuss that in the next post.