Coroners Records.....

[emanday]

It has been suggested by the SP UserGroup that GROS give consideration to using volunteers to add such info to the statutory indexes, as well as complementary info to the census indexes, - e.g. occupation and place of birth.

I think, David, that were they to ask for such volunteers they'd be spoilt for choice. In fact, being a "lady of leisure" with lots of time on my hands I'd like to be kept in mind as a volunteer.

As an ex-IT consultant, I am used to spending hours in front of a PC and still welcome any excuse to do so.

[sporran]

Hello Mary,


I was the instigator (twice) of suggesting volunteers be used, and GROS seem to prefer to pay for the work to be done overseas. However, I shall make a note that you are a willing volunteer if I make any progress.

In the meantime, FreeBMD and FreeCEN always welcome volunteers for the English and Welsh BMD and census records.


Regards,

John

[emanday]

Already doing some for FreeCEN Scottish Census stuff.

Question: and don't anyone get the wrong idea here as my kids bloodlines cover a wheen of nationalities, but unless these "outsourced" transcribers are familiar with Scottish colloquisms and old name variations, occupations etc... how do they do it?

[DavidWW]

Already doing some for FreeCEN Scottish Census stuff.

Question: and don't anyone get the wrong idea here as my kids bloodlines cover a wheen of nationalities, but unless these "outsourced" transcribers are familiar with Scottish colloquisms and old name variations, occupations etc... how do they do it?

Training, and lookup tables, along with a first phase of 100% quality control for a limited area, involving true double entry of data with third party checks if there's a difference, followed by sampling QC.

David

[emanday]

Bet all that ain't cheap.

[DavidWW]

Bet all that ain't cheap.

But still much less expensive that doing it in the UK, and that's including having several personnel based in the Indian sub-continent, or the Far East, in the beginning at least for training etc............. albeit more expensive than Ancestry's similar approach except they don't use a true double entry method, - the second person just checks the first person's entry, - hence the greater accuracy of GROS indexes

David

[emanday]

Bet all that ain't cheap.

But still much less expensive that doing it in the UK, and that's including having several personnel based in the Indian sub-continent, or the Far East, in the beginning at least for training etc............. albeit more expensive than Ancestry's similar approach except they don't use a true double entry method, - the second person just checks the first person's entry, - hence the greater accuracy of GROS indexes David

Not as cheap as the volunteers who'd do it out of love of the subject, and the double entry system could still be applied.

[Kathy]

I am also a volunteer for Freecen, and have given my time willingly for 1851 and now working on 1861 for an area in Scotland. At times deciphering is difficult, but the work is always checked.

Having said that, there have been occasions, when I have requested help from TS members with deciphering my tree finds, and with the work done for Freecen, I consider I have a pretty fair idea of what I am looking at.

If SP is outsourcing the transcribing to places like India, this is where I get slightly peeved, and I have to say, a lot less confident in the accuracy of researching on SP.

I aqologise immediately if my comments sound racist, that is not my intention. David, if you had said this outsourcing had gone to an English speaking country, I would not feel annoyed, most of us have had the calls from India, from people who purportedly speak English, but cant understand a word they say.

I won’t even buy into the discussion on, it being cheaper in India, yes, it probably is, but willing volunteers, with a keen interest in research are even cheaper, and have a vested interest in accuracy.

Kathy

[LesleyB]

Hi all

...if you had said this outsourcing had gone to an English speaking country...

Just to stick my two-pennyworth in, with transcribing I think there are two issues which make it a lot easier for the transcriber and the end result being more accurate:

1. The transcriber ideally should speak the same dialect as the document he/she is transcribing, or at least have a good understanding of it.

2. The transcriber should be familiar with placenames in the area.

It also helps if the transcriber has seen other documents from the period & is familiar with the likely vocubulary and syntax.
...in an ideal world....

Best wishes
Lesley

[IanS]

Hi Kathy, I recently had to report some misindexing of the 1841-1871
census, which was then forwarded to GROS.

I also asked what instructions etc were given to the transcribers when preparing the indexes. (still to get an answer to that bit).

My complaint was ' THE DOUBLE 'S' SYNDROME'

It had already been brought up before on this forum with the surname Ross which had in many cases been transcribed as ROP, (by David W in Jan), but I wonder if people realise how widespread the mistranscriptions in the 1841-1871 census were? This particular glitch needs another airing.

Would any present day GLAP families stand up.
Ditto - Ruppell/Rupel, Slop, Crop , Cropan, Copar, Whitecrop, and countless others.

Translate as Glass, Russell/l , Sloss, Cross, Crossan, Cossar, Whitecross. etc.

Therefore , in many cases, 2 x 'S' = 1'P'.

I obviously can't prove all of these as I can't afford to buy the credits I would need, but a simple check in the Statuatory records or Parish Records gives a fair idea the number of mistakes made in census.

When I read my own particular entries, it was clear to me that it was the old-fashioned 's' written as 'f' followed by a normal 's' which both together were transcribed as a 'p'.

Now when normally searching for a possible double letter in a surname e.g. Russell - you would do something like Rus*e*l or Ru*sel* then take your pick of the most records to download. BUT in double 's' syndrome (if you knew about it) you would have to do Ru*e*l or Ru*el*.
(There are allegedly 274 Rupel/ll families in the 4 census of 41-71)
Fine for that surname but try it with something like GLASS which would then be Gla*. 103 pages on one of the 1871 census. Not feasible, but across the 4 census there are 100 Glap entries. So in this case it seems to be better just substituting the 'ss' with a 'p' straight away, along with your normal Glass searches.

My point being, I totally agree , had they been done in Scotland by transcribers with a bit of Scottish research experience, then checked by someone else with hopefully more experience, I doubt that these mixtakes would have happened to the same extent.

P.S. There must be thoosands of L.D.S. submissions where double 's' is also transcribed as 'p'.

last note- There will be bone fide names which will not fit in to the above theory, but as a general rule, if there are no proportionate entries in the parish or Stat. records, ( as in Glap) the surname is probably a mistranscription.