My attention was grabbed by a hint from Fiona Brooker during the Legacy Family Tree Webinars presentation, Foundations in AI for Family History 4 of 5: Smart Tools—AI Helpers for Genealogy Tasks, on Wednesday evening.
Fiona mentioned getting 61 hits when searching at home for an ancestor on FamilySearch Full Text Search. The same search at a Family Search Affiliate Library yielded 91 hits.
I tried it myself at the Ottawa Stake Family History Centre, now officially termed a FamilySearch Centre. Here are the hit counts for five people.
| Person | Home | FHC |
| WHN | 16 | 29 |
| PM | 482 | 544 |
| JR | 1,299 | 2,042 |
| JDA | 51 | 192 |
| JM | 1,165 | 1,494 |
The median is 57% more hits at the FHC.
When searching for a place name, the number of hits jumped from 10,133 to 29,409.
I didn’t have time to do more than sample the hits. One, revealed at the FHC and not found during a home search, was an extensive will left by a wealthy two-time widow who had no children of her own.
I’ll have to remember to try the same searches at an affiliate library. If you try it please pop your experience into the comments.