Two billion images
There’s a saying that The Legal Genealogist heard years ago — that human being tend to count things as one, two, three… many.
In other words — and it’s certainly true in my case1 — we can’t really wrap our heads around very big numbers.
Numbers like, say, two billion.
That’s a two followed by — count ’em — nine zeros.
Which is the number of images of genealogy records that are now available on FamilySearch, according to a news release that crossed my desk yesterday.2
If that’s not enough — and for a genealogist, there’s no such thing as enough when it comes to records — FamilySearch is adding records to its online system to the tune of millions of records each and every week.
Wow. That’s a ton of records.
As in one, two, three… many.
So since I’m heading out later this week to the Nebraska State Genealogical Society conference in Columbus Friday and Saturday, I decided to take a look at what’s available for Nebraska in those two billion records on FamilySearch.
If you look at the Historical Records Collections for the United States and then click on Nebraska, you might think there are only five collections — Nebraska Civil War Service Records of Union Soldiers, 1861-1865; Nebraska Marriages, 1855-1995; Nebraska State Census, 1885; Nebraska, Box Butte County Marriages, 1887-2015; and Nebraska, Broken Bow Homestead Records, 1890-1908 — and three of those are on partner sites.
That doesn’t sound very impressive, does it? Not a very big piece of two billion.
Except that that’s not even scratching the surface of what FamilySearch actually holds in terms of Nebraska records or materials that can help with your Nebraska research.
To drill down, you have to get off the Historical Records Collections part of the website and get over to the Catalog search area.
Don’t just enter Nebraska as the place. Use the Subjects field and put “Nebraska” in there for an overview of the kinds of things FamilySearch has. Even limiting it to items available online, it takes up most of a very long web page and ranges from one item catalogued as American literature – Nebraska – Bibliography (Checklist of Nebraska non-documentary imprints, 1847-1876, from the Historical Records Survey) to one listed under United States, Nebraska, Madison, Meadow Grove – Church records (Church records, 1877-1919, from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).
Better yet — use the Keywords field and put “Nebraska” in there as your search term. With the filter set for availability anywhere, there are 8,599 items that show up in the search results. Change that to only those available online, and you still get 4,144 items.
One, two, three… many.
Take a look at the image here showing items by category: under Business records and occupations, you get things like the Dawes County pensions, 1924-1945, from the Dawes County Historical Museum in Chadron; under Church records, those for the Methodist Episcopal Church in Emerald from 1886-1974; under Ethinc, Political, or Religious Groups, you’ll find a wide variety of records from the Winnebago Agency of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Not enough for you? How about:
• Tax lists from Box Butte County.
• Voting records from Harlan County, along with its District Court records.
• The 1885 Nebraska state census schedules.
• Naturalization records from the Nebraska federal courts.
• The 1915 roster of veterans of the Mexican, Civil and Spanish-American Wars from the Nebraska Secretary of State.
And so much more.
One, two, three… many.
So many just from Nebraska.
Where I hope I’ll see you, Friday and Saturday, at the Nebraska State Genealogical Society 2018 conference in Columbus.
SOURCES
Hi Judy,
Thanks for the notes about what is, for me, a different way of approaching the online resources of the FHL (I typically use catalog search).
As you may make it easier for folks to find new and interesting things on Family Search, I do think it may be worth reminding folks of the terms of use on the site. To me it seems that their Terms text is muddled, redundant, and in places contradictory. But the essence of it, after reading it repeatedly and going three rounds with Family Search support via email, is that one may not (is not permitted to) make any use of downloaded image files other than private research. Attach and upload to a public tree on Ancestry.com? NO! is the answer. Unless.
The only bright spot (and it is a huge one) emerged when they finally told me if I obtained permission of a record holder I could do whatever I want with their images (within said permission). Thus it became clear to me that FHL are not asserting restrictions on use to protect their own property rights in the images; instead they have thrown a blanket over everything in consideration of the many and varied contracts they have made with various sources and the possibility that some are subject to copyright or other restrictions, entire distinct from the fact that they (FHL) made the scans and own the files.
And it really is a blanket. Quite fussily, they (Family Search help) refused even to acknowledge that they know that the US Census returns are in the Public Domain and they declined to agree, as I had supposed that they would, that in light of their earlier responses I should need no further permission to re-publish those. SIGH.
In my subsequent experience, I found that such permission can be easy, hard, or impossible to get. One NY County Clerk responded within minutes with all the permission I needed to “publish” deeds etc. to an Ancestry.com public tree. Another, when I sent a similar inquiry, only replied after repeated nudges over several weeks and only with the most guardedly worded “permission”. In the case of some records, I have not been able even to locate the current authority for material that FHL filmed decades ago, so I can’t even ASK for permission.
I wound up spending more than 6 months on my project to resolve rights issues for some 3000 media items attached to my FTM tree that I was considering making public. The majority (but not overwhelming majority) have worked out favorably, and permissions do keep tricking in (just today NA Ireland finally responded to a request I made months ago, with permission to re-publish pages from the Census and Tithe Applotment… hurrah!). Often such permissions come with little caveats, typically “must include a statement that the image is used by permission of …” that seem simple but do need attention. Finally, I wrote my own software to embed annotations regarding rights and permissions into the files themselves (as EXIF title and comments, for the techies keeping score, and doing that does not re-encode the entire file). And finally finally, another program to stuff those notes into the FTM 2017 database by emulating an interactive user to “type” in new comments and captions so that they will appear on Ancestry. (The “closed” nature of the FTM datbase can be a real nuisance at times…)
I hardly expect most folks to go to such lengths. But I think people should realize that the Family Search terms of use actually do not perrmit them to “publish” images on sites such as Ancestry.com unless the record holder gives permission. And that sometimes said permission may be easy to get, and sometimes… not.
regards,
-tom-
Do keep in mind that in the vast majority of cases, for US-based records, these records are public domain and require no permission at all for publication.
Ummm… but… even for images of content that is in the public domain, the Family Search Terms of Service explicitly do not permit users to publish images downloaded from it. It’s not a copyright question (I just mentioned copyright as an aspect of the cloud of FUD that seems to envelop them). I pursued this vigorously with them and they stuck on the position that I needed to get permission from the record holder even when I pointed out the public domain status of some of the documents and even for US Government records that they got from NARA.
[Also, though somewhat tangential, there’s the fact that some non-Federal authorities in the USA assert that they own copyrights in their records (yes, we’re looking at YOU, New York!) and if the record was created in such a jurisdiction and it is not a court decree and was never published and was created after 1898… it is, I believe, still under copyright in the USA under the provisions for unpublished works.]
Clearly, FamilySearch is asserting that it can’t give you blanket permission. Its terms say clearly: “It is not our responsibility to determine what “fair use” means for persons wishing to use content from this site. That remains wholly a responsibility of the user. Furthermore, we are not required to give additional source citations. Also, in no case do we guarantee that any content on this site is legally cleared for any use beyond personal, noncommercial use. Such responsibility also ultimately remains with the user.” This user has a pretty good idea where the line is.
Looking like a dead horse here but… I find it very difficult to regard the text you just quoted as “clear” considering that the paragraph right before it says “You may not post content from this site on another website or on a computer network without our permission. You may not transmit or distribute content from this site to other sites.” That too seems “clear” but in the exact opposite direction.
That’s where personal judgment comes in. FamilySearch is not going to give you permission. Use your own best judgment as to whether it is right, legal and likely to get you into hot water.
Thanks for giving me a different way of looking at those contradictory T&Cs on Family Search.
🙂
For research in the Southern US most of the needed records are still in local courthouses, local libraries, and state repositories. Ancestry and FamilySearch have a low priority on land and court records used in this research. Fold3 offers many military records for Southern research.
The records for the South that are online require considerable legal, computer, genealogy, and research skills to find and use to their full potential. But that is a reason sites like this exist.
For research anywhere in the world, anyone who overlooks the vast records that have never even been microfilmed, much less digitized, is not conducting reasonably exhaustive research.
Hi Judy. Thank you so much for highlighting Nebraska! We do look forward to having you speak soon! There is SO much in Nebraska that is NOT online that’s it’s good to have this pointed out. Welcome to the Cornhusker State! #GBR (that’s Go Big Red)
🙂 Glad to highlight Nebraska, and I’ll see everyone there soon!