FamilySearch Places: Mission & Purpose
What is FamilySearch Places?
FamilySearch Places is a database of standardized places throughout the world and across recorded history. Places are a powerful way to provide context to bring people’s stories to life: where they were born, grew up, married, raised families, endured hardships, and experienced other important life events . By standardizing a place, or creating a uniform way to describe it, FS Places creates a shared meaning between human users and computer systems, allowing the computer to understand relationships between places and draw logical conclusions. FS Places supports many experiences and features that can only happen when computer systems can infer meaning with the help of a standard.
What are some of the functions supported by place standards?
FS Places is not intended to be an encyclopedia, though it may have research links, alternate names, related places, and other useful information. Our goal is to provide enough detail for a user to be able to confidently choose the correct place standard for a life event or record.
The complexity of world geography means that in some cases, FS Places may combine historical periods to prioritize shared meaning. Having a few distinct place standards reduces confusion and increases user accuracy when selecting a standard. In cases where simplification is necessary, search algorithms help funnel a user’s place information into the correct standard, which enables the connections described above.
When are simplifications needed?
Namibia, formerly South-West Africa, became a country in 1990. Its administrative structure changed from districts to regions two years later, in 1992. A village in Namibia should be represented with two historical periods: once under a district in South-West Africa until 1992, then under a region in Namibia from 1992-present. This merges the 1990-1992 transitional period into the previous one by including Namibia as an alternate name for South-West Africa.
The eight provinces of Korea remained unchanged from 1417-1945, with the exception of a brief period (1895-1896) in which Korea was reorganized into districts. The provinces were restored unchanged, and the villages beneath them didn’t experience significant changes. It is a better user experience to represent this period with one historical period instead of three, with the districts as Related Places so records from the district period will still find the correct village.
Powiat bialski (Biała District) in Poland had different borders from 1919-1939 and from 1945-1975, but had the same administrative jurisdiction, etc., leading the two periods to look identical without a map. We have combined these two historical periods into one (1919-1975). If a village moved in or out of this district due to the changes in boundary, that village would have an extra historical period under the new district instead. If a village moves many times within a short span of years, those historical periods may be combined to simplify the experience for users, with Related Places showing the additional jurisdictions.
World War II represented many changes to territorial administration in a short time. As a rule, FamilySearch Places does not represent these changes until boundaries were formalized in 1945.
In certain cases, the display name might not perfectly match a user’s record, though FS Places strives to include that information in alternate names, related places, or elsewhere in the place standard.
We understand that a country’s history can sometimes be a complex and delicate subject with regards to war, colonization, or other factors. Documenting these events can sometimes cause tension when historical shifts in jurisdiction or previous names for places are considered insensitive or painful in a modern context. As we standardize places around the globe, we seek to respect every country’s history and culture when making decisions for standardization. When there are different perspectives on how to describe the history of a country, the jurisdiction or name of a place is often decided based on the structure and naming conventions of official records at that point in history and positions from organizations like the United Nations. Since the purpose of FamilySearch Places is for use with family history, our primary focus is on ensuring the ease and clarity of documenting life events and records in a way that patrons around the world can understand, including those not native to the country in which they are doing research.
In all things, we endeavor to find balance between the complexities of history, diverse needs of different users, and requirements of the FamilySearch systems we support. We are always working to improve, and we hope to find harmony between having a detailed description of a place and having a common standard that enables emerging technologies.
