Online Images and Cataloging Problems

I am very happy that the LDS has been putting images of records online. For example, images of catholic parish records for the Archdiocese of Chicago are online. But, I don't like their cataloging of the online material. Most of these were originally on microfilm and were scanned to create digital images.

1. The first problem is they stripped out all item number images and make no reference to the microfilm number. Those of us who have done most of our genealogical work prior to the popularity of the internet have our sources referenced to a film and item number. If someone chose to look-up and view one of my sources online, it would be very difficult because film and item numbers are not included in the description of the collection.
2. The second problem appears to be inconsistency. Most of the cataloging is one volume, one description-- not unlike on a microfilm. However in other cases, they condensed the description which may describe multiple items. For example, a description might read "Marriages 1888-1915" but within that collection there might be individual items like "Marriages 1888-1901", "Marriages 1901-1910" and "Marriages 1910-1915" which are not broken out. So where does each item in the online collection start? It's a lot of trial and error to locate individual items. While the LDS is looking to create a name index that might eliminate some of these complaints, good descriptions would allow browsing of records in some meaningful way.
3. Because of problem 1 above, the descriptions can get very messy and downright wrong. For example, there might be two or more "same named" parishes. Because the film number has been stripped away, some "same named" parish records have been incorrectly cataloged together instead of separately as they are on film. So you have to guess which set of records refer to your parish.
4. A variation of problem 3 presents itself in the descriptions of different filmings of the SAME records. One set of images comes from the scanned microfilms through 1915. Another set comes from reimaged volumes of some (closed) parish records that were imaged through 1925. So you know that records for 1916-1925 are "new" and have just one description. However, they reimaged the pre-1916 records as well. The descriptions of these items then get confused with the descriptions for images that came from the microfilm. This is good news because you have two copies of the same image and you can choose the best quality one for your purposes. The quality of the photography may not be the same. One set may be easier to read than the other. The problem is being able to specify explicitly which collection is being used. While records appear on specific pages in their respective volumes like pages in a book, the image sequence numbers don't necessarily (and usually don't) follow the actual page numbering. For example, page 36 of a marriage volume may be on image 187 of a collection consisting of 543 images. In a different collection, that SAME image of page 36 might be image 65 in a collection of 232 images. So the problem is specifying which collection in your references. There may be only subtle differences in the collection descriptions. Why can't the description say, "This collection came from microfilm #" and "This collection was a reimage"? If I say image 65, someone should not have to guess which collection to try.

Finally this next problem is one that no one can really do anything about except be aware of it using the example begun above. Let's say you wanted to look ahead by ten pages to page 46. Does this mean in one collection I go to image 197 and 75 in the other? It might work but you might be off a page or so. Why? During the imaging, the photographer may need to do a retake because the first attempt was too blurry or too dark or light. Or there may be a slip of paper inserted in a volume that was filmed but which was not present during the reimaging. So specifying a collection unambiguously would be appreciated!