New Country Page Changes

Recent improvements have been made to the country landing pages (hereafter referred to as “country pages”, such as Japan Genealogy, England Genealogy, etc.) in the FamilySearch Research Wiki. No relevant content has been lost, however, some information has been relocated and/or restructured, and some broken links or inaccurate information has been removed. The changes and improvements come as part of a broader, Wiki-wide effort to standardize the organization of content across countries and topics for a more optimized user experience. These adjustments have been made based on extensive feedback from genealogists/family historians of all experience levels, as well as a series of subsequent user testing. See below for a description of the recent changes.

Country Page

• Country pages will continue to be updated in the future as additional information is gathered. Each country page will be protected from public editing to preserve accuracy, structure, and relevance of the information on the page.
• The headings below describe changes made to each section of the old (previous) version of the country page.

Getting Started

Getting Started with [country name] Research

• Articles and resources under the previous “Getting Started with [country name] Research” section have been relocated to the appropriate locations, usually housed within other articles listed in the right-hand sidebar (hereafter worded as “sidebar”). This change has been made to each country page. Use the example of Belgium below to understand the adjustments made to your country page of interest.
  • In the example below, the “Belgium Civil Registration” and “Belgium Church Records” articles (record types) will be consistently located in the Record Types section of the sidebar.
  • The link to “Belgium Finding Town of Origin” (a research strategy) has been relocated to the Belgium Beginning Research section of the sidebar, and has also been listed on the Belgium Research Tips and Strategies page (the “Research Strategies” link under the Belgium Beginning Research section of the sidebar).
  • Applicable articles/resources to Getting Started have also been included within the new red “Getting Started” button that appears on the new country page (see second image below).
    
    

[country name] Research Tools

• Articles and resources under the previous “[country name] Research Tools” section have been relocated to the appropriate locations, usually housed within other articles listed in the sidebar. This change has been made to each country page. Use the example of Belgium below to understand the adjustments made to your country page of interest.
  • In the example below, the “WWI casualties (1914-1918)” link and the “Belgium War Dead Register” link have been moved to the Belgium Military Records page in the sidebar.
  • The “Birth,Death,Marriage,Divorce and Other Certificate procedures” link has been moved to the Belgium Civil Registration page in the sidebar.
  • All links to pertinent genealogical word lists have been moved to the “[country name] Genealogical Word Lists” section of the sidebar.
  • Etc.
    
    

Colored Buttons

• The blue “Online Genealogy Records” button remains unchanged from the previous version of the country page.
• The purple “Ask the Community” button has been modified to link to the new “Online Research Help” page, which provides direction to both online genealogy research communities as well as virtual genealogy consultations.
• The new red “Getting Started” button links to a Getting Started page specific to that country. It provides basic research methodology for beginners, as well as any other beginner-related Wiki articles or resources for that country.
  • Getting Started pages will continue to be updated as more information is gathered. These pages will be protected from public editing to preserve accuracy and relevance of the information on the page.
    
    

More [country name] Research Strategies & More [country name] Research Tools

• Some country pages previously had additional Research Strategies and/or Research Tools listed near the bottom half of the country page. (See the image below for an example of these headings on the previous England country page)
  • Each link in the “More [country name] Research Strategies” heading, the “More [country name] Research Tools” heading, and other similar headings in the lower section of the previous version of the country page has been relocated to the appropriate article in the sidebar, following the pattern laid out in the sections above.
• All resources in the “FamilySearch Resources” heading have also been relocated.
• Information about FamilySearch Communities is now housed in the purple “Online Research Help” button.
• All classes through the FamilySearch Learning Center (or other free FamilySearch-sponsored class recordings) will now be found in the “Online Learning” page located in the “[country] Beginning Research” section of the sidebar.
• All FamilySearch Historical Records collections will be found on the corresponding Record Type article (located in the sidebar), organized by topic.
• The FamilySearch Center locator map is now found as a link in the “Local Research Resources” section of the sidebar.
  
  

For future Wiki content updates, see the Wiki Content Updates article found in the left-hand sidebar.

All suggestions and feedback will be processed through the Submit Content or Report a Problem form.

Use the FamilySearch Learning Center to find online genealogy classes.