Great Disorder

The pages are in great disorder.

You can’t say they didn’t warn you.

Diocese of Tuam, Parish of Castlebar, Baptisms Jan. 2, 1838-April 17, 1855
Castlebar | Microfilm 04214 / 02 / page 1
Image from NLI

This is how these two facing pages appear on the National Library of Ireland website. That’s where I originally viewed them, and that’s where I originally downloaded them from.

Diocese of Tuam, Parish of Castlebar, Baptisms Jan. 2, 1838-April 17, 1855
Castlebar | Microfilm 04214 / 02 / page 79
Image from NLI

And this is how they appear in the FHL films at FamilySearch. First, the left-hand leaf, which corresponds to the left-hand leaf below.

Diocese of Tuam, Parish of Castlebar, Baptisms Jan. 2, 1838-April 17, 1855
FHL film 007732604 image 1695

And now the right-hand leaf, which corresponds to the right-hand leaf below.

Diocese of Tuam, Parish of Castlebar, Baptisms Jan. 2, 1838-April 17, 1855
FHL film 007732604 image 1731

I believe this is what kids these days call a hot mess. According to WorldCat, FHL created their films in 1984. NLI didn’t digitize their microfilms until 2010, but I can’t find any indication on their website of when they filmed the registers. Was it before or after FHL? And who touched the volumes in between? This volume and a couple of others are in such a mess that it’s sometimes impossible to tell what year an event happened in.

I really want to smack whoever is responsible for the “great disorder.”

Let this be yet another reminder that it’s important to cite where you viewed the image, because all images of a given document are not necessarily identical to one another. Different institutions may have filmed an item independently, and clearly those differences are sometimes more than just cosmetic.