"Austin W. Spencer" <AustinWSpencer@sdc.cox.net> wrote: Austin, we seem to have a semantics battle going when the issue is elsewhere. The LDS calls its 1880 "opus" and those for Canada and UK "census records." Obviously they are more than a "mere" index and not a transcript, so I'll settle for "records" and return to my original point, which was this: > > ... you shouldn't rely on it as the source of your > > information for you genealogy or cite it as the source unless the > > original is quite unavailable to you. Even the LDS "finding aid" has > > errors. A good example of this was posted in this thread by Linda McDowell. > I think it is more properly termed an abstract. O.K. And it should be treated as any other abstract. A place to locate specific information which you can then verify against the original, if available. > My point was that before you can delve into the films (under any > catalog except FHLC) or the images, you need the ED range. For > that, FHLC remains an indispensable companion to the census > database. Luckily, the latter's output includes film numbers linked > to FHLC's description of that film's contents. Thanks for that information. I have been using the NARA descriptions, which need to be looked up seperately. > Besides, any time > you resort to guessing, your first guess has only a random chance of > being more accurate than the result of a diligent search. You got > lucky with ED 83. That's simply not true, Austin. Each roll of census microfilm has a series of stamped numbers in the upper right hand corder of the odd numbered images. There is only one of each number from 1 to about 400 (perhaps someone can give us the exact number, as I have read what that is). Once you know the page number and the contents of the film (e.g. the EDs on the film), it is quite easy to locate which of the EDs contains the desired number. In the case I cited, the film contained ED 69 through a portion of ED 88. I did a mental calculation that page 264 would be in ED 83; it turned out to be on 82. But that surely was not a lucky guess. It was based on sure knowledge and had I taken more time, I likely could have picked ED 82 the first time. (Admittedly, this can vary because the number of images in an ED can vary slightly.) And once you know the first sheet number in an ED you can precisely calculate which image contains the desired page (assuming no pages are missing from the image set). Regards, Richard "Richard A. Pence" <richardpence@pipeline.com>