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Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

No need to settle for bad scans

August 28, 2018 By Janine Adams 8 Comments

I do a lot of my research online and I’m so grateful for the amazing digitization that has been done of genealogy documents. I’m frequently astounded by the high quality of the scans. It’s a little hard to imagine a genealogy life before this digitizing. (Hats off to those of you who did genealogy research prior to the internet!)

But every now and then I come across a document that was poorly scanned. It happened recently when I downloaded from Ancestry a death certificate for my great grandfather’s brother, Joseph Taylor Rasco (1872-1964). It’s a typewritten death certificate, which is always nice. But the scan was blurry. It was clear enough that I knew it was him, but too blurry to glean information without difficulty.

So I decided to look to see whether Family Search had a different scan of the same document. A few clicks later, I pulled up a crystal clear version of the same document.

Here they are side by side (click the photo to see them larger):

It was a good reminder to me to look a little harder if I come across a scan of a document whose quality makes it hard to read. I may not find a better one, but it’s worth a try!

 

Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash

Filed Under: Challenges, Genealogy tips Tagged With: electronic files, research

Comments

  1. Cathy Meder-Dempsey says

    August 29, 2018 at 2:47 am

    Great tip, Janine. I’ve had the same issue with the 1880 census on Ancestry. On FamilySearch I found much better images.

    Reply
    • Janine Adams says

      August 29, 2018 at 6:33 pm

      Good to know. Thanks, Cathy!

      Reply
  2. Vickie Sheridan says

    August 29, 2018 at 2:50 pm

    Wow what a difference. That is a good reminder to check both sites. I have seen bad scans of some agricultural census records for my great grandfather. I need to check Family Search to see if they have better versions. Thanks!

    Reply
    • Janine Adams says

      August 29, 2018 at 6:27 pm

      So glad you found that reminder helpful!

      Reply
  3. Lisa Gorrell says

    August 30, 2018 at 4:30 am

    I have often found better scans of WWI draft on FamilySearch.

    Reply
    • Janine Adams says

      October 7, 2018 at 6:31 pm

      Good to know, Lisa. Thanks!

      Reply
  4. Kay Arnold says

    October 2, 2018 at 11:58 pm

    I would like to urge all who find bad images on ancestry,com to report them. I have been assured that they do occasionally go back and rescan or improve documents – probably not as quickly or frequently as we would like – but it won’t be done at all if we don’t report the problems. Same with incorrect transcriptions/indexing of documents.

    Reply
    • Janine Adams says

      October 7, 2018 at 6:31 pm

      Good point, Kay. Thank you! I hadn’t thought about reporting them.

      Reply

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about me

I'm Janine Adams, a professional organizer and a genealogy enthusiast. I love doing family history research, but I find it's very easy for me to get overwhelmed and not know where to turn next. So I'm working hard to stay organized and feel in control as I grow my family tree.

In this blog, I share my discoveries and explorations, along with my organizing challenges (and solutions). I hope by sharing what I learn along the way I'll be able to help you stay focused and have fun while you do your research, too.

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