Thursday, September 18, 2014

FamilySearch Has Added an Interactive World Map to Narrow Searches

FamilySearch recently modified their Search page so that a user can see how many collections are available for each continent, country or state.  See the FamilySearch announcement at  https://familysearch.org/blog/en/familysearch-offers-interactive-world-map-searches/.

The updated Search page (https://familysearch.org/search) puts the World Map at the top of the page (on most browsers and 100% magnification) under the heading "Research by Location:"


Scrolling down the page permits the user to "Browse all published collections" which leads the user to the entire Record Collection list (at https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list).

On the Search page and the World map, if the user clicks on a continent (or some countries) on the interactive map, the continent (or country) is highlighted in yellow, and a popup box showing the countries (or states for the USA) opens saying "Choose a Location."  Here is the United States list:


When you select a location from the list, you can see how many collections are available, the years covered, the number of indexed records, and the number of unindexed images:


At the bottom of the popup box is a link to "Start researching in the [location]."  Here's the list for the United States:


From here, the user can select a specific collection to search or browse, can use the "Filter by collection name" in the upper left-hand corner, or can click on a Place in the list of States in the left-hand column.

FamilySearch says that:

"Benefits of using the interactive map: Unlike the previous map, this map should be visible on the screen in most browsers without requiring you to scroll down the page. It requires fewer clicks and less time to get to all the collections for a specific country. Prior to going to the collections for the country, you see the amount of data available for the country and when the collection information was last updated."

Well, not exactly.  I can get to the list of collections for a specific country in two clicks:

1)  I click on the FamilySearch Record Collection page (all collections - https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list) in my Chrome Bookmarks Bar

2)  I click in the "Filter by collection name" link  and  start typing the place name, and the list shows up after three or four letters.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/09/familysearch-has-added-interactive.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver



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