A Tidal Wave of Data

Few of those who do research on the FamilySearch.org website yet realize that many of the available digitized records only appear in the Catalog rather than in the Historical Record Collections. Over a billion records have been added to the catalog entries and are waiting to be processed into the Historical Record Collections.  In addition, to assist in navigating all of these digitized microfilm records, FamilySearch has added this film strip or block view. The visual.advantage of this view is obvious to anyone who has spent untold hours scrolling through microfilm images one by one. In this view you can clearly see where on section of the original microfilm, often indicated by an item number, begins and another ends. This view also speeds up the process of scrolling through to find an individual record.

Presently, until all of the added digital records are processed into the Historical Record Collections and only a smaller number have been indexed, it is a good idea to search for specific record collections in the Catalog rather than relying completely on the name search for the Historical Record Collections.