I've been keeping an eye on the collection "England, Devon Bishop's Transcripts, 1558-1887" https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2515875 since it was added -- the "Browse all Published Collections" page says the collection was updated on 16 Feb 2016. As Theresa said, cicking through to the images, right now you only get the digital file numbers. When I first tried to access the collection, I couldn't view it remotely -- I got a message that I had to be at a FHC. But trying it again this morning, I can now view the images. Several people at FamilySearch have said that FS has recently changed the procedure they have for putting images online. It used to be that collections weren't put up until they were indexed. Now they are putting up the images to browse first, and linking up the index later, after the indexing is done. There are also intermediate steps like introducing named waypoints. Presumably linking up the individual parishes in the collection to the place entry in the catalog is part of the process, but I don't know in what order they do all these steps. Adrian suggests that "cataloguing is ahead of loading" -- I would guess that the basic catalog entry for a collection has to be made public before the images are, or we wouldn't have an access point to get at the images. But there's no telling what the workflow is for the behind-the-scenes server-side work. And Adrian's correct -- Hugh Wallis' site and the Archer Software site are concerned with the IGI, which won't necessarily cover all the parishes in the new images. In a webinar last week about the history and future of the FHL, research specialist Jason Harrison said that the new collections are digitally imaged, and hard drives go into in the Granite Vault. The goal is to eventually have all the microfilms digitally imaged, too. Re: Paul Hockie's comments about the BTs -- I would repeat Dr. Tom Jones' caution against source snobbery. If both BTs and Registers exist for the same records, I will always consult both. It's likely that the clerk making the BT was far more familiar with the handwriting of the person who wrote the register than we can be -- with the BTs we have a second opinion about what the register said, which can be valuable. There are also some cases where the person making copies for the BTs added information which was not on the original registers, or made corrections to them, and if you always skip the BTs in favor of the registers you would miss that information. We should consider that the BTs are secondary when we evaluate the information in them, but I wouldn't make that a reason to reject them out of hand. Jan Murphy [email protected]

Just a few days ago I was trying to get my head around the FamilySearch Catalog. They don't make it easy. The second of these links seems relevant to this thread, including correspondence between users and FS: https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Introduction_to_the_Family_History_Library_Catalog https://familysearch.org/blog/en/news-flash-digitized-microfilm-drawer-computer/ FS do things differently for their five BT collections and there is no simple list matching Devon parishes to film numbers, but in a roundabout way we can extract that correlation from one interface and use it in another, and get other useful information in the process. A CATALOG search for Place = Devon, FHC = Online takes you to http://tinyurl.com/FS-Cat-Devon-Online. Don't get too excited about the long dropdown list of resources because you cannot access many of them from this page. The blue link to Places within Devon opens a list of over 600 parishes. Choose any parish of interest, say East Allington, and click through Church Records to Bishop's Transcripts, which you still cannot access, but scroll down to Film Notes telling you that film 4376173 at Granite Mountain contains BTs for Baptisms, marriages and burials, 1608-1609, 1614-1615, 1617, 1622, 1628, 1641, 1656, 1664, 1666, 1668-1682, 1687-1690, 1695, 1697-1698, 1700-1702, 1708-1709, 1712, 1714-1715, 1719-1732, 1734-1737, 1743-1747, 1749-1797, 1802-1811. Note the film number and copy and paste those dates for your subsequent reference. Navigate back and repeat for other parishes of interest. Open a new window and go to Devon BTs at https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2515875. From this page try searching for any person (who must necessarily have been indexed) to see if you get lucky. Otherwise search for Life Event = Any in, say, Warkleigh (which has been indexed) and get 286,056 indexed results (for the whole of Devon) of which the first 415 are in Warkleigh (because that is how FS prioritises search results). All of those indexed records link to a matching image, but you must be free-logged-in to FS to view the free images. You can refine that search by adding a last name or choosing a different life event. Now search for Any life event in East Allington and get the same 286,056 results (in alphabetical order of last name) but no records in that parish because it has not yet been indexed. That too-small number of 286,056 is just the BMD records (including 2 people for each M) in the minority of parishes that have been indexed, so until they are all indexed (yielding a very much larger number of records) we must resort to clicking on "Browse through 93,511 images" of BT pages to get 522 film numbers (or just open http://tinyurl.com/FS-DevonBTs-FilmNos in another window) and choose 4376173 for East Allington to open and browse 159 pages of those unindexed BTs. Whatever you find, remember that BTs were supplied as loose sheets so some years might be missing as noted above or may not have been properly archived or may no longer be legible - take a look at my Elizabeth Beavis at https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2M3-6CTY. Does anyone know a better approach? Regards - Martin Beavis -----Original Message----- From: Jan Murphy via Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2016 8:50 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction I've been keeping an eye on the collection "England, Devon Bishop's Transcripts, 1558-1887" https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2515875 since it was added -- the "Browse all Published Collections" page says the collection was updated on 16 Feb 2016. As Theresa said, cicking through to the images, right now you only get the digital file numbers. When I first tried to access the collection, I couldn't view it remotely -- I got a message that I had to be at a FHC. But trying it again this morning, I can now view the images. Several people at FamilySearch have said that FS has recently changed the procedure they have for putting images online. It used to be that collections weren't put up until they were indexed. Now they are putting up the images to browse first, and linking up the index later, after the indexing is done. There are also intermediate steps like introducing named waypoints. Presumably linking up the individual parishes in the collection to the place entry in the catalog is part of the process, but I don't know in what order they do all these steps. Adrian suggests that "cataloguing is ahead of loading" -- I would guess that the basic catalog entry for a collection has to be made public before the images are, or we wouldn't have an access point to get at the images. But there's no telling what the workflow is for the behind-the-scenes server-side work. And Adrian's correct -- Hugh Wallis' site and the Archer Software site are concerned with the IGI, which won't necessarily cover all the parishes in the new images. In a webinar last week about the history and future of the FHL, research specialist Jason Harrison said that the new collections are digitally imaged, and hard drives go into in the Granite Vault. The goal is to eventually have all the microfilms digitally imaged, too. Re: Paul Hockie's comments about the BTs -- I would repeat Dr. Tom Jones' caution against source snobbery. If both BTs and Registers exist for the same records, I will always consult both. It's likely that the clerk making the BT was far more familiar with the handwriting of the person who wrote the register than we can be -- with the BTs we have a second opinion about what the register said, which can be valuable. There are also some cases where the person making copies for the BTs added information which was not on the original registers, or made corrections to them, and if you always skip the BTs in favor of the registers you would miss that information. We should consider that the BTs are secondary when we evaluate the information in them, but I wouldn't make that a reason to reject them out of hand. Jan Murphy [email protected] ------------------------------------------

Jan, I have not heard of Dr Tom Jones or "source snobbery". There is an accepted hierarchy of quality of genealogical data. Prime or Vital information is data recorded when the event took place. Civil registration and Parish Registers are in this category. The next tier are those transcribed or based on vital information, BTs, Census, Poor law, Military and similar records. Following this we have reported information which can include newspapers, books and even family legends. With regards to BTs, they were a lists of BDMs sent to the bishop once a year just after Easter until 1813 when they changed to the calendar year. There were exemptions, omissions and late submissions and completion may be rushed. There are examples of the transcript correcting an entry but the presumption is that the register is correct and that the BT is a "back-up" copy. I don't think I said "reject BTs out of hand" . What I intended to say was that if only the BT exists, then that is the source we have to use. If the registers exist, then we should obtain a copy and, if they exist, compare with the BTs. If they exists, the Registers are, like civil registration, the "legal" entry. Cheers Paul -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jan Murphy via Sent: 24 April 2016 20:50 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction I've been keeping an eye on the collection "England, Devon Bishop's Transcripts, 1558-1887" https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2515875 since it was added -- the "Browse all Published Collections" page says the collection was updated on 16 Feb 2016. As Theresa said, cicking through to the images, right now you only get the digital file numbers. When I first tried to access the collection, I couldn't view it remotely -- I got a message that I had to be at a FHC. But trying it again this morning, I can now view the images. Several people at FamilySearch have said that FS has recently changed the procedure they have for putting images online. It used to be that collections weren't put up until they were indexed. Now they are putting up the images to browse first, and linking up the index later, after the indexing is done. There are also intermediate steps like introducing named waypoints. Presumably linking up the individual parishes in the collection to the place entry in the catalog is part of the process, but I don't know in what order they do all these steps. Adrian suggests that "cataloguing is ahead of loading" -- I would guess that the basic catalog entry for a collection has to be made public before the images are, or we wouldn't have an access point to get at the images. But there's no telling what the workflow is for the behind-the-scenes server-side work. And Adrian's correct -- Hugh Wallis' site and the Archer Software site are concerned with the IGI, which won't necessarily cover all the parishes in the new images. In a webinar last week about the history and future of the FHL, research specialist Jason Harrison said that the new collections are digitally imaged, and hard drives go into in the Granite Vault. The goal is to eventually have all the microfilms digitally imaged, too. Re: Paul Hockie's comments about the BTs -- I would repeat Dr. Tom Jones' caution against source snobbery. If both BTs and Registers exist for the same records, I will always consult both. It's likely that the clerk making the BT was far more familiar with the handwriting of the person who wrote the register than we can be -- with the BTs we have a second opinion about what the register said, which can be valuable. There are also some cases where the person making copies for the BTs added information which was not on the original registers, or made corrections to them, and if you always skip the BTs in favor of the registers you would miss that information. We should consider that the BTs are secondary when we evaluate the information in them, but I wouldn't make that a reason to reject them out of hand. Jan Murphy [email protected] ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DEV/ and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index?list=devon ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Actually, the parish register was not always completed when the event took place. The original instruction in the 16th century was that the entries were to be made every Sunday after Service in the presence of one of the churchwardens (see link on Parish Registers below). The information on the Bishops Transcripts held in the Devon Record Offices says "Some Bishops Transcripts were written out first, and copied up into the register before being sent to the bishop, and some do not contain all the information found in the register, while some contain more" http://www.devon.gov.uk/index/councildemocracy/record_office/family_history_3/bishops_transcripts.htm http://www.devon.gov.uk/index/councildemocracy/record_office/information_dalss/guide_sources/parish_registers/prbackground.htm Regards, Joy ----Original message---- >From : [email protected] Date : 26/04/2016 - 19:47 (GMTST) To : [email protected] Subject : Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Jan, I have not heard of Dr Tom Jones or "source snobbery". There is an accepted hierarchy of quality of genealogical data. Prime or Vital information is data recorded when the event took place. Civil registration and Parish Registers are in this category. The next tier are those transcribed or based on vital information, BTs, Census, Poor law, Military and similar records. Following this we have reported information which can include newspapers, books and even family legends. With regards to BTs, they were a lists of BDMs sent to the bishop once a year just after Easter until 1813 when they changed to the calendar year. There were exemptions, omissions and late submissions and completion may be rushed. There are examples of the transcript correcting an entry but the presumption is that the register is correct and that the BT is a "back-up" copy. I don't think I said "reject BTs out of hand" . What I intended to say was that if only the BT exists, then that is the source we have to use. If the registers exist, then we should obtain a copy and, if they exist, compare with the BTs. If they exists, the Registers are, like civil registration, the "legal" entry. Cheers Paul -----Original Message----- ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DEV/ and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index?list=devon ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DEV/ and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index?list=devon ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message