19 April 2013

Have Full Text Searches of Books Been Turned Off at FamilySearch?

A few years ago, I wrote about a discovery of a book I made on the Family History Archive (fornerly http://sites.lib.byu.edu/fhc//index.php) at Brigham Young University. The item of interest was located because I was able to perform a full-text search on that site. That search page that I used to use has been moved to the FamilySearch website as part of the reorganization.

And now it appears that the full-text search does not search the full text of the book any more.

I can get to the "advanced search" of the books on the FamilySearch site and it will let me perform a "full text" search, but it does not appear that I am actually getting full text results. Maybe the book description and catalog items for the book are being searched, but it does not appear that I am getting full-text results.

I really hope that I'm doing something wrong--otherwise I'm pretty disappointed.

2 comments:

  1. The full-text appears to be working for me? I am getting results that would not come up from any of the information in the record of the book and must be coming from the full-text of the document. Perhaps it was a glitch? Perhaps they turned it back on after your post?

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  2. Michael,

    The best way to report this to FamilySearch is to go to the bottom of the page on the FamilySearch site and click on the Feedback link.

    That will take you to the FamilySearch Get Satisfaction site.

    Create a new comment string and list the issues. Be sure to title the comment with words that describes the problem in 10 words or so. I think a copy of your post would work very well as the text along with anything else that would help them understand the problem and the results you hope to see .. if you feel more description is necessary.

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