FamilySearch Junk A Reminder to Save When You Find

It wasn’t on the FamilySearch for very long, but it was there for a short time on 24 January. A database with the title:

JUNK. Records that should be deleted if we could.

It is gone as this post is written (8:00 am central time on 25 January 2019). My suspicion is that, like it states, it was something they could not get rid of–at least temporarily. Several of my colleagues searched it and none of us were able to find any records in the actual database. We probably were not looking for the correct “junk” names.

But the appearance of the database and it’s disappearance makes for a good reminder:

save things the minute you find them

Don’t wait til later. You never know when something that was available at one point in time will be gone. Databases usually don’t disappear for the reason this one did, but it’s not unusual for sites to lose access to licensed databases for one reason or another. Sites “go down” for financial reasons and never reappear. And sometimes you just can’t find it again no matter how hard you try.

Save your JUNK when you find it.

Before the garbage man takes it away 😉

 

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6 thoughts on “FamilySearch Junk A Reminder to Save When You Find

  1. Great advice – I’ve learned my lesson on that, with FS losing licenses to images and I’m now back to only their indexed version. I now save anything I find to my laptop and then back it up to two separate hard drives…

    • That’s excellent advice. I tell people, download immediately and back up. Then you can read and analyze what you have found.

  2. Ardyce Bresett says:

    WAY back in the beginning, saving a file had to be very creative. You could only use 8 characters! Now, I save by last name, first name of the important person in the document. Then I further identify the item with information about where I got it. For examples: “Charter, Stephen The Ogdensburg advance and St. Lawrence weekly Democrat., August 06, 1891” and “Charter, Stephen MISTAKE The Ogdensburg advance and St. Lawrence weekly Democrat., August 13, 1891.” Then “Charter, Stephen Will Probated Northern tribune and Gouverneur herald-times., March 01, 1893.”
    I have now narrowed down his date of death to between August 1891 when they mistakenly announced his death and March 1893 when the will was probated.

    • I try and avoid names quite that long, but it’s easier now that in the earlier days when there was that eight character limit. The important thing is to be consistent.

  3. Jacquie Schattner says:

    I spent Spring 2018 using FamilySearch’s online records for Kotorz, Poland. I spent 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. I maticulously save the images. THANK GOODNESS! There were about a dozen films available of baptisms, marriages and death. All of those, are gone! Yes, I can go to Salt Lake City, and see the film, but they are no longer online. So glad I save the images. Surprising, the nearby towns, nothing changed. Just this one town.

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