A few days ago I emailed FamilySearch asking:
The most recent update in the FamilySearch catalog is for Nov 26, 2018 and claims 36,354,828 records (for the 1911 census of England and Wales.) Strangely a copy of the catalog I captured showing an update for that census on Nov 8, 2018 showed exactly the same number of records. What was updated?The response was:
Sorry, but we have no way of knowing what was actually updated in a collection, unless the catalog entry for the collection mentions what was updated.So what's the point of mentioning an update? Presumably someone at FamilySearch knows what's happening but they're not communicating it, and those responding to queries don't have the ability or initiative to inquire further. An update should be a signal to search again if you tried before and didn't find an expected record.
In this case I think it may be a glitch in the catalog as today (29 November) it shows an update to the present date but with the same number of records. That's also the case for the 1911 census of Ireland and several other titles.
2 comments:
Clearly there is a lack of both initiative on the part of Customer Service and quality control. Too bad.
Randy Seaver regularly lists the "updates" with the before and after number, and I had noticed that very frequently the numbers are identical.
Craig
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