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New Look for Category and Collection Pages for Historical Records

We’re pleased to announce that we enhanced the look of the category and collection pages on MyHeritage’s search engine for historical records, making them easier to use. This continues a redesign that started several years ago.

On MyHeritage, historical records are arranged in categories, for example Birth, Marriage and Death, Census, Immigration, and so on. Categories typically have sub-categories. Then there are collections that hold individual records. This huge database comprises almost 20 billion historical records, and can be searched in its entirety, through the main search page on myheritage.com/research. But you can also drill down to a particular category, sub-category or collection and search only the records in there, to avoid being distracted by other records. The pages of categories, sub-categories, and collections have been enhanced in this latest update to make them easier to use.

Here’s a review of the latest enhancements.

Accessing a category page

Five main categories are accessible through the Research pull-down menu in the main navigation bar on the MyHeritage website:

Five main categories are accessible through the Research pull-down menu in the main navigation bar on the MyHeritage website Birth, Marriage & Death; Census records; Family trees; Newspapers; and Immigration records

These include Birth, Marriage & Death; Census records; Family trees; Newspapers; and Immigration records. You can access them easily from this menu. You can also visit the Collection Catalog where you can locate any specific collection you need.

To visit the other category pages, visit the main search page on myheritage.com/research. Do this by simply clicking Research on the main navigation bar. Under the heading “What type of records are you looking for?”, the list of all categories is displayed:

Accessing category pages for historical records in the main search page (click to zoom)

Accessing category pages for historical records in the main search page (click to zoom)

The categories are: Family trees, Birth, Marriage and Death, Census & Voter Lists, Newspapers, Schools and Universities, Immigration & Travel, Military, Public Records, Books and Publications, Directories, Histories, Government. Land Court & Wills, Photos.

Clicking on a category opens the category page. 

New Category Page

New category page for Birth, Marriage & Death (click to zoom)

New category page for Birth, Marriage & Death (click to zoom)

The Category page, enhanced in this update, contains a search form with fields that are most relevant to the category. For example, in the category page for “Birth, Marriage & Death,” the search form includes fields for the person’s name, date of birth, marriage or death, and place of birth, marriage or death. To maximize ease of use, and reduce clutter, the search form exposes only the most commonly used fields, but all other relevant fields can still be used below “ADD DETAILS”. 

For example, if you want to search all Birth, Marriage and Death records (often nicknamed BMD for short) for all records pertaining to Richard Sharp whose father was named Laurence, you can specify Richard as the first name and Sharp as the last name. Then click “Father” below “ADD DETAILS” and enter the name Laurence. Many users are not aware that MyHeritage is very flexible in its search capability. You don’t have to specify a first name or last name if you don’t know them and you can search via a myriad of other fields, based on what you know, in order to find the elusive records you are looking for. For example, you can find all records of someone called Linda from Kansas who was married to someone called Benedict and had a son called Sam – all without mentioning last names.

At the bottom of the search form there is a checkbox that you can enable if you’d like the search to match your terms exactly.

An abbreviated description of the category is displayed on the top right. If you’d like to read the complete description, click “Read more” below the abbreviated description,

Lower down in the Category page, a list of sub-categories is displayed for further drill-down. For example, on the Birth, Marriage & Death category page, you can narrow your search by visiting any of the sub-categories.

Sub-categories of Birth, Marriage, & Death Records (click to zoom)

Sub-categories of Birth, Marriage, & Death Records (click to zoom)

Click any sub-category to visit the sub-category page.

New Sub-Category Page

Sub-category page for Birth records (click to zoom)

Sub-category page for Birth records (click to zoom)

The sub-category page, as in the example shown above for Birth records, is very similar to the category page. On the top left, there is a search form with fields that are most relevant to specific sub-category. The search form in this case includes fields for the person’s name, date of birth, place of birth, father, and mother’s name. You can add more criteria under “ADD DETAILS” .

Each category and sub-category page lists notable collections in this category. Click a collection to access the collection’s page, which includes a search form for that specific collection.  

New Collection Page

Collection page for the France, Church Baptisms and Civil Births collection (click to zoom)

Collection page for the France, Church Baptisms and Civil Births collection (click to zoom)

The collection page is similar to the pages for categories and sub-categories and we won’t repeat the description of the components mentioned earlier. A search made from here will include only records from this collection.

For each collection, a list of “Related collections” is displayed, and for most collections there is also a sample record from that collection, usually of a very notable person. 

Collection page: related collections and a sample record for the France, Church Baptisms and Civil Births collection (click to zoom)

Collection page: related collections and a sample record for the France, Church Baptisms and Civil Births collection (click to zoom)

You can click on the sample record to view it.

Sample record: Birth Record of Emile Zola (click to zoom)

Sample record: Birth Record of Emile Zola (click to zoom)

Summary

Our team continues to work hard to improve the user interface of the website so you can have the best possible experience for researching your family history and maximize your chances of making new discoveries. We hope this update to the category and collection pages makes it easier and more enjoyable for you to search our vast repository of historical records.

Enjoy the search! 

The post New Look for Category and Collection Pages for Historical Records appeared first on MyHeritage Blog.

Source: My Heritage

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