10 December 2011

Genealogy Transcriber

I've gotten a couple of emails about the Daily Genealogy Transcriber, so I thought I'd mention it here as this blog is where I normally post opinions and other ilk of that genre.

My original purpose behind the Daily Genealogy Transcriber was to help genealogists see how indexers and transcribers may make "mistakes." It really was not intended to be a guide to complete, entirely accurate transcription. Most of us deal with misreadings, errors, and honest mistakes by indexers every day (and thanks to them for indexing things for us!). Because of that, seeing how things can be read incorrectly, I think is an advantage to any genealogist who uses digital indexes to records.

Because of that, I often do not post the entire image--sometimes I do, but not always. The idea is to see how things get read "cold." That can't always be done if one has the entire series of records.

If the document or record is on your family, should you use other entries to help interpret the entry? Yes. Should you use other documents and sources to help you in your interpretation? Yes.

But at Transcriber, we're trying to help genealogists see how "errors" get in digital indexes and those indexers often do not have other documents on the family to help them in their analysis.

You can look at today's entry here.