Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Latest Record Search Collections

The table below shows the most recently released or updated FamilySearch Record Search collections, with the most recent at the top. You can click on a collection name to jump right to the collection in Record Search.

This is my 2nd Record Search widget. This widget fulfills two needs unmet by the current Record Search website:

  1. Unlike Ancestry.com, Record Search doesn't have a list showing recent releases.
  2. Unlike the rest of the Internet, Record Search doesn't allow arbitrary selection of text and copy to the clipboard. So like my Collection News widget, my own need to do so drove the development of this Latest Collections widget.

It's OK that I've built widgets that do things beyond FamilySearch's own web clients. That's the point of creating a platform of APIs. Like Yahoo, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft with their cloud platforms, FamilySearch is giving the genealogical community a set of powerful cloud APIs that third-party developers can use to build increasingly powerful applications.

This is cutting edge stuff. It won't be too long before you see increasingly powerful desktop and web-based genealogical applications. Hats off to Gordon Clarke and all the others at FamilySearch making this stuff happen.

12 comments:

  1. So why is it dated Tuesday, 14 April...did I sleep a day extra? It's 2 p.m. in the afternoon on Monday where I am. It's not even 14 April in Greenwich yet.

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  2. Every cell says 'undefined' for me. I am using Firefox 3.0.8 with Mac OS 10.5.

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  3. Randy,

    Welcome to the future!

    The Ancestry Insider

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  4. John,

    Like my first widget, I've yet to go back and add non-Internet Explorer support to this widget. Sorry for now!

    The Ancestry Insider

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  5. I love this clickable table! It's absolutely brilliant, thank you so much for this. And thanks also for the iGoogle widget, it works really well for me on IE {keeping fingers tightly crossed}.
    I am wowed, Giselle

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  6. Hey, it works now for my Firefox on Mac OS 10.5. Congrats.

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  7. Thanks to Logan for showing me how to make it work on Firefox.

    -- The Ancestry Insider

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  8. ... and on Safari 3 on my Mac OS X 10.5 laptop.

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  9. Thanks for the handy list, though I am shut out of the site because my computer cannot use flashplayer 10.

    "Collections" on the site is not really accurate. Many of the items are somewhat-enhanced indexes only (extracting some elements of the original record) rather than record images. In the WV material there are many errors such as misread names but there is no way set up to send corrections. Some have links to affiliated pay-for-subscription sites for the actual record, some do not.

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  10. Hey Mystery Man (yes, I still have no idea who's behind the mask). This is great! Thanks for taking the time to create this. Any chance we can get the % complete added?

    Julie @ GenBlog

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  11. I think familysearch changed something in a recent update. The table doesn't work for me anymore.

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