Family Search and the U.S. 1950 Census

+14 votes
261 views

It appears that Family Search is finished (or nearly so) indexing the 1950 census records and adding source citations to their records.  So I have been updating profiles with the new data, but I notice that Family Search seems to have changed its style a little bit.  Their source citations no longer include the full URL for a record.  They leave off the https://www.familysearch.org/ part and just give you the ark/... part, so you now need to add the first part back manually in order to get a working link.  And where their citation would formerly show the name of the subject whose record you were looking at, it may now include other names from the same census record, and it often omits the name of the person for whom the citation is actually intended.  And finally, there's that four-character alphanumeric designator at the end of a URL -- that's still being used to uniquely identify each person in a given record, but now the designator shown in their citation doesn't necessarily match the person whose data you're looking at, or the actual URL of the web page you're viewing.  So if you routinely copy and paste a Family Search provided citation as a WikiTree source citation, you may need to do some repair to it first.

Fortunately for us the Sourcer app seems to offer a way around the problem.  It uses the WikiTree templates to convert the Family Search data and images into real URLs and attach them to the right person, and seems to get it right every time.  So I think that's the way to go for these records.  But I just can't conceive of any rational explanation for what Family Search is now doing to their source citations, or any realistic expectation about where they might be trying to go with this approach.  Does anyone have any insight into what's going on here?  If you do, please explain.

(Or if you're thinking that perhaps WikiTree should develop a new 'Anal Retentive' badge for members who become concerned about stuff like this, just give it to me straight!  smiley)

in The Tree House by Dennis Barton G2G6 Pilot (560k points)
Perhaps this is just a thing with US census records?  Today I added citations for some England census records, and they have the link:

database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:47Q5-6ZM : 22 February 2021),
It's new to me with the 1950 census records.  Perhaps others have seen it on other records, but it's a style I haven't encountered  before on Family Search.

I just checked the citations for one profile I just worked on and you are correct that the 1950 census citation on FS does not have the beginning of the url, but the 1940 census still has it, as does the 1930 and 1910. 

I'll keep an eye on it, as I also do work on folk from the US.  (It's just that England was today - updating a Titanic related person's profile - and I had added a couple of census years.) 

It isn't just related to census citations. I have seen it, repeatedly, for various sources and for sources I previously cited that were complete. I, too, have reported it to FamilySearch.

And I am so glad you noticed the other issue. It was driving me crazy that the designator did not necessarily match the person I was trying to source.
Rae, you can fix that problem of the designator not matching the person by changing those last four alphanumeric characters in the FS citation to match the ones in the URL for the page.  It's just a pain to have to spend time fooling with it.

I have resorted to that. I was mostly glad to know that someone else had noticed and it wasn't my imagination or feeble brain!!laugh

2 Answers

+10 votes
 
Best answer

It has been reported to Family Search.  I added a census page where I found the bad url in the citation.  I did verify it was bad for both people in the same census family.

Family Search Discussion where you could add some other pages where the problem exists.  The initial one reported was an 1850 census, so it is not limited to 1950. 

by Linda Peterson G2G6 Pilot (789k points)
selected by Susan Smith
Thanks Susan

On the Census pages now, there is a little feedback button - I was contacted directly by a tech person from FamilySearch when I expressed my dismay at the new citations, among other things frown

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/142046/incomplete-source-links-in-multiple-places#latest

+4 votes
I've found this repeatedly (and only just now found the discussion here) about the FamilySearch citations.  The citations are just awful with incorrect names, no link, and they seem to randomly accompany some US census sources and not others. I've seen these bad citations on sources from 1850-1950.  The good news is that if you already have the source that links -- it still does, but the new citation does not link and usually, I will not include that if I already have a linking citation.

My work around for a few months has been to actually copy the image link and insert that as part of my source citation.  Yes -- it's horrible looking in edit mode -- but it will show you the image.
by Kathy Zipperer G2G6 Pilot (477k points)

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