Following up on Friday’s post, “Get More Hits from Full Text Search,” the table below includes a column showing the number of hits at the Ottawa Public Library; all branches are FamilySearch affiliates.
| Person | Home | Affiliate | FHC (FSC) |
| WHM | 16 | 28 | 28 |
| PM | 482 | 537 | 544 |
| JR | 1,299 | 1,972 | 2,042 |
| JDA | 51 | 191 | 192 |
| JM | 1,165 | 1,468 | 1,494 |
The median increase at the Affiliate over Home is 53%. At the FHC it is 57%.
When searching for a place name, the Affiliate Library had 28,284 hits, compared to 10,133 at Home and 29,409 at the FHC.
Could one claim to have done a “reasonably exhaustive search”, as required by the Genealogical Proof Standard, unless a search at a Family History Centre was conducted?
Regardless of doing a full text search from home, a FamilySearch Affiliate, or a FamilySearch Centre, with the challenges with the current iteration of handwriting recognition technology I don’t feel that it yet covers the criteria of a reasonably exhaustive search. It still misses way too many records for me to depend on the Full Text Search feature. But I will say that Full Text Search has provided some very useful and interesting clues for me to follow up by browsing the records myself.
Thanks to your posting, I went to my local library yesterday to gleefully search the FS Affiliate link. Now I have to go to the Family History Center after all to conduct a thorough search – something I wanted to avoid, but can’t! Thanks for the heads up! 🙂
Sadly, the nearest FamilySearch Centre to me is 5-6 hours away, including a ferry ride, so my reasonably exhaustive research will not be perfect. In fact, until I spend a year in England, it wouldn’t be reasonably exhaustive as I know there are records there that haven’t been digitized.
I do the best I can with what I have and always remain open to revisiting work based on any new evidence I find.