system

The FreeCEN System
Items from previous Newsletters

Those weird and wonderful spellings...
For many of the people in Sussex in 1861 the question, "How do you spell your name?" had only one honest answer - "I don't". We are so used to filling in forms with our personal details it can be hard to remember that the enumerator was faced with people who wrote down their name just once in a blue moon or more usually had someone write it down for them. No wonder we find variations like Harriet, Harriett, Harriot and Hariott so often. Ten years later the same name could be spelled differently and the spelling on a baptism record or marriage certificate could be different yet again. Surnames can be even more varied. We've just come across one entry where the spelling of the surname changes part way through the family. Dinage or Dinnage? Which is right? They both are! The same happens even today - what is the "right" way to spell "Catherine", for example? Who's to say?

Checking and Validation - what happens?

It's useful to know what will happen to your piece when you've finished transcribing it.

Checking Firstly the piece is put through a computer program that checks for obvious errors - eg a missing District number, or an entry in the wrong column. Your spreadsheet is then converted into a datafile that can be sent to another helper who reads the enumerator's entries all over again and notes any disagreements with what you have put. He or she will look in particular at all the 'X' flags and your comments from Column Y, giving a second opinion on them.

Validation is another semi-automatic process; the computer will throw up all the unresolved queries and a third person makes a final decision before the piece is uploaded to the database and appears on line. On a few occasions even after three people have had a go, it is still not certain what the enumerator has written, and a note will appear on the database with an alternative.

If you've not done so yet, it can be quite informative to look up all the George Smiths, or Mary Ann Browns on the FreeCEN search page, and see how your hard work will appear eventually!

Just Checking...

We've probably mentioned to you that when you send us a completed piece or a sample of your first few pages we run it through some "checking software".

The computer will spot such things as over-long entries in the occupation column (or anywhere else), non-standard county codes, missing folio or page numbers, and other things that need to be put right before a checker can even begin to look at the accuracy of the entries themselves.

Some volunteers run this software on their own transcriptions before they send them in; as well as saving time for the checker it can be very informative in showing you how well you've remembered all those instructions in FIELDS.

On the other hand it can be a bit scarey - the first one we did listed 17 pages of problems! (It was the same few mistakes over and over again...)

If you think you might like to give it a whirl we'll let you know how to set about it.