1841 Births

[cmahoneynz]

Generally, we are supposed to be doing an exact transcription of the records, and for the most part, this is happening.

However, when it comes to the 1841 census, we are changing the "yes" and "no" places of birth into something else to help with searches on Places of Birth, which I can understand.

The concern here is (which I have seen raised elsewhere) is that if we are making some obvious changes to the original records here, then some may consider the possiblity that we are making changes elsewhere as well and thus, the question of the accuracy of the transcriptions comes into question.

My suggestion here is that in an appropiate place on the website we actually put up a message alerting people to the fact that when it comes to 1841 Places of Birth we are actually changing the "yes" and "no" into an actual chapman code, and why we are doing so

[AlOneill]

We are also 'correcting' some of the place names, I believe. Do we flag this?

What else are we not transcribing exactly?

[cmahoneynz]

Changing places of birth on the 1841 census is something we are intentionally doing, for good reasons, and something, I think should be mentioned in an appropiate place on the website.

Also, if a piece was done under FreeCEN1, then changes to what was enumerated are almost certain to have happened somewhere in any given piece due to restrictions in field lengths. Something easy to explain, and possibly also should be mentioned in an appropiate place on the website. Fields most likely affected are Occupations, and Places of Birth.

Beyond that, I see no excuse for anyone deviating from "Type what you see", and do remind my groups to transcribe exactly as enumerated without making any changes, even if it looks wrong, and leave the assumptions to the researchers. I also remind them that we do have use of the Notes column if they think an appropiate messge about an entry is needed.

Having said that, some are known to making changes anyway, and the most common one I see is where a word (or name) is abbreviated on the original document, but the transcriber will expand it into full anyway. And another common one I see is when a gender has been enumerated into the wrong column, but the transcriber will correct anyway

In the case of Places of Births, again my instructions to my transcribers is that the verbatim place of birth is to match exactly that as enumerated, and make use of the Alternative Places of Birth to enter one that matches the Gazetteer. For example, if place of birth says "Paris France" then transcribe as "Paris France", and then as an alternative POB, transcribe it as "France Paris"

Website in search results does show both Verbatim Place of Birth, and Alternative Place of Birth which means researchers here are seeing both the enumerated name, and our suggested alternative (which matches our gazateer).

[DeniseColbert]

@geoffj-FUG where/how do you think we should address this for users?