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My e-mail box is filling up with comments and questions from people who want to access the online 1901 Census for England and Wales. There have been rumblings of discontent all this year, but now the rumblings have reached a crescendo. It seems there are multiple problems with the census database. First of all, it isn’t online anymore! Next, there are questions about the accuracy of the indexes. Third, there are questions about the sale of vouchers that remain worthless.

By way of background, the U.K. Public Record Office launched a new service in January of this year that was to make the 1901 census records available worldwide for a modest fee. The Census Enumeration Books were to be scanned and the images put online on a pay-as-you-view basis. They were also to be indexed -- a name index for free and a full indexed entry on a pay-as-you-view basis.

The following week I again wrote about the continuing problems in this newsletter. The Public Record Office (PRO) announced that they had ordered more Web servers to handle the unexpected crush of genealogists who wanted to access the online transcribed records. The PRO announcement said, in part:

The site remains unable to meet continuing levels of demand. The PRO has agreed with QinetiQ's technical team that searching of the database and downloading of images will not be available for one week to allow enhancements to take place. The Census site will provide updated information and help about using the Census service. Meanwhile the normal 1901 Census microform services continue to be available at the PRO Kew and local record offices and public libraries across the country.

The 1901 Census On-Line service is available at the Family Records Centre and at Kew. Access is limited to one hour per user by ticket. Tickets are available on a first-come first-served basis and no advance bookings can be taken.

QinetiQ originally planned to have the indexes created by residents of the British prison system. However, eventually much of the indexing work was actually done in Sri Lanka. There is some disagreement as to how much of the indexing was done in that country. The PRO's own advisory council, with members drawn from the Society of Genealogists, the Federation of Family History Society, the Guild Of One Name Studies and others, reportedly was told that only a small percentage would be so transcribed and that these would be mostly the Welsh returns. Yet other documents state that 78% of the total indexing was done on the Indian sub-continent. Whatever the source, those who have used the 1901 online census during its brief availability claim that the error rate is much too high to be acceptable. It appears that those doing the transcription work often were unable to read the 100-year-old handwriting.

Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake queried his MP about this. Mr. David Lidington (Aylesbury) then asked the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, pursuant to her answer of 20^th March, Official Report, column 414W, on the 1901 census, what steps were taken to familiarize employees based in India and Sri Lanka with the handwriting and spelling used by enumerators of the 1901 census. Ms. Rosie Winterton, Parliamentary Secretary, responded:

The data input company based in India and Sri Lanka demonstrated that it had in house skills at interpreting late 19th century handwriting by producing test results of a very high level of accuracy prior to the award of the contract. In order to augment these skills, ten Public Record Office staff with expertise in interpreting census enumeration returns spent, between them, twenty weeks at the company's bases in India and Sri Lanka. They gave training sessions on the detailed transcription rules, on the formation of the handwriting to be found in the returns and on the etymology of Welsh place names. They also responded to queries raised by individual operators while they were transcribing the returns.

Public Record Office staff ensured that keying operators had access to appropriate reference sources such as English and Welsh gazetteers and name listings. They also provided supervisors with detailed feedback on errors encountered during the quality assessment of the transcribed data to seek to prevent such errors re-occurring.

The transcription rule for most of the data found in the 1901 census returns was to transcribe it exactly as it appeared. As a result, there was no requirement to translate 1901 spelling to its modern day equivalent.

Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake and others who have used the indexes claim that the above response is misleading. Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake writes:

The only quantitative assessment of the transcription accuracy of the process so far has been the one published in Computers in Genealogy by John Dawson (vol 7. No.5/6, p.248) using data from the 1891 pilot of Norfolk, which was prepared to the same protocols. In this article he concludes "There must be serious doubts about the usefulness of a product such as the 1891 Census Pilot of Norfolk when so many obvious errors of transcription remain." I can only comment on my subjective experience of editing both the 1891 pilot and the 1901 itself as well as the errors found in my one 50 pence download on 1 Jan 2002. I think John Dawson may be guilty of understatement.

There has been some head-scratching about the work of the "ten Public Record Office staff with expertise in interpreting census enumeration returns [who] spent, between them, twenty weeks at the company's bases in India and Sri Lanka." It would appear that their time spent in India and Sri Lanka did not result in quality indexes.

A third issue revolves around the use of prepaid vouchers. There were to be two ways of paying for use of the 1901 U.K. Census database: one was with a credit card and the other was with a prepaid voucher. The PRO appointed a large number of resellers for the prepaid vouchers and offered each reseller a discount on each £1000 of vouchers sold. It is estimated that more than £100,000 ($160,000 U.S.) worth of vouchers were sold. The vouchers remain worthless as they pay for access that is unavailable. To their credit, the PRO has offered refunds for those who have given up and now simply want their money back.

This should be a fascinating story to watch in the coming months. My thanks to Jeanne Bunting, Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake, Linda Jones and others for all the information they supplied about the U.K. 1901 census fiasco.

I have written before about the Canadian government’s plans to either destroy or else seal forever all census records after 1901. Gordon Watts has been leading an effort to stop this loss of vital genealogy information and has published frequent newsletters about this battle waged by genealogists all over Canada as well as the rest of the world. Now Gordon writes:

On Wednesday 17 April 2002 the Environics Research Group Report on the Town Hall Meetings and Focus Groups regarding Release of the 1906 and 1911 Census Records, was quietly placed on the Statistics Canada website. There was no fanfare, no parade, no notice. Later the same day, links on the Environics website no longer went to individual reports on the Town Hall meetings, but now opened the Report on Statistics Canada's website.

I have finished reading the Report, and to say the least, I am not impressed.

Last week I wrote about the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s new "Early Vital Records of Massachusetts" database. The Society also has recently added a smaller, but noteworthy, online database: Massachusetts Pensioners' Receipts 1829-1837.

Many of the soldiers who served during the Revolutionary War were given pensions from the federal government for their service. The manuscript collection at NEHGS contains a number of original receipts with the soldiers' signatures, acknowledging the receipt of their pension funds. This searchable database contains images of the receipts, including the original signatures or marks of the pensioners.

The number of records in this database is small, but if your ancestor is one of the few listed, you could find this to be an excellent source of information. You can even see an image of the original document containing your ancestor’s signature. Access to this database is restricted to members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

A little over 5 years ago, the General Commission began the United Methodist Annual Conference Archives Survey Project. The purpose of the project was to bring together into one place basic descriptive information about the holdings of the conference archives. Forty-one of the 65 annual conferences participated in training workshops on how to conduct the survey. To date, 25 have sent their completed surveys. The information is being re-keyed onto an online Web site. At present there are 5 conferences up on the site, with 2 to 3 more due online soon.

At the UM Archives Connection home page you will find a table, which holds the names of the annual conferences which are on-line. Selecting a conference name will display the directory information about that conference as well as summary information about their holdings (books, newspapers, journals and such). A link at the bottom of the conference page will force a display of the archival holdings for that institution. The material appears in no particular order.

The other option is to select the search link from the UMAC home page and then do a keyword or topic search across the entire database.

My thanks to Sandra Shafer for the information about this valuable new resource.

The following is from the Routes to Roots Foundation, Inc.:

The Abbott Memorial Library in Dexter, Maine has put a lot of obituaries online. These obituaries were originally published in the Eastern Gazette, the local newspaper. I spent some time this week using the obituaries database and found that it covered not just the town of Dexter but also all the surrounding towns served by the newspaper. It also frequently lists the deaths of former residents who had since moved elsewhere.

Not all of the obituaries are online yet; apparently this is an on-going project. However, when I used the database, I found some obituaries as early as 1858 and others as late as 2000.

The menus to use the database are a bit stark although very simple to use. You can search by last name or by year, or you can search for any word in the database. I found the last option to be a great way of finding relatives. Obituaries will often state that "the deceased is survived by" and then will list many names. Sometimes a search for a family name found someone listed as a survivor of the deceased, thereby giving me information about an ancestor. In addition, scanning through the list of other survivors often identifies siblings, cousins and children.

I should point out one reason why I found this database so useful: Dexter is my hometown. That’s where I was born and raised. I found a number of my ancestors and other relatives listed in this new online resource. If you have ancestors who lived in or near this small town in central Maine, you may find it as valuable as I did. However, the site also serves as an excellent example of what a group of individuals can do in any small town: put your obituaries on the Web where everyone can easily search them.

I’d like to thank my schooldays friend, Evelyn White, for telling me about the Dexter obituaries online database.

Ern Ackroyd in Canada sent along a note about a nifty site that can be useful to genealogists looking for specific address in Ireland. Ern writes:

It has just been brought to my attention that a site in Ireland has mapping similar to MapQuest but with a neat twist. If you zoom in closely enough, you will then be presented with an aerial photo of the locale. The photos are close-up enough to almost identify the type of car in the driveway.

The photo feature is not available in all areas of Ireland, but I know that it is for Dublin.

Thought you might like to know of it. Have a look.

I looked at pictures of Dublin and was amazed to see automobiles and lorries traveling on the roadways. Anything closer and I could have read the license plate numbers!

In the first of those two articles, I wrote, "None of this exists today. Randy Bryson’s announcement simply indicates a future course. I suspect it will be two years or even longer before the new XML format is in place and in use. However, the benefits will justify the wait."

It has been a bit more than a year since those words were written. Now the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has posted a draft of the specification on the Internet for review and comment. This draft is not a complete document, which is still under development. It should not be considered as a working specification. The authors of the draft welcome comments and suggestions. The contact information is contained with the document.

If you enjoy documentaries, check out what's available on the American Radio Works site. You can listen to documentaries on struggling family farms, anecdotes of California prison guards, or personal accounts of segregation in the South. These stories and others can also be heard on your local public radio.

American Radio Works is the documentary project of Minnesota Public Radio and NPR News. ARW is public radio's largest documentary production unit; it creates documentaries, series projects, and investigative reports for the public radio system and the Internet.

The following announcement is from the U.S. National Genealogical Society:

National Genealogical Society
Editor, National Genealogical Society Quarterly
Position Available

The National Genealogical Society Quarterly, published since 1912, represents the highest standards of the National Genealogical Society and the genealogical community. It publishes the best in research and genealogical scholarship from all parts of the nation and ethnic groups. Material includes compiled genealogies, case studies, methodology, notes on little-known resources, critical reviews and unpublished sources from private and family archives. It is recognized as one of the premier academic and scholarly journals in the field today. The editor has responsibility for assuring that the NGSQ maintains its stellar reputation and that its articles continue to represent the best in genealogical research and knowledge.

Responsibilities: The editor will be expected to:

• solicit, acquire, appraise, arrange peer review of, select and edit all articles to be published in the Quarterly.
• maintain a panel of advisors who represent the highest ranks of American genealogical scholarship.
• supervise the journal’s editorial assistants, proofreaders, indexer, and book review editor.
• prepare articles, cover, and graphics for transmittal to the printer.
• work with the printer throughout the publication process.
• respond promptly and process all editorial correspondence.
• judges (with other panel members) submissions to the NGS Family History Writing Contest.

There are three positions open at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston. The positions are:

• Administrative Assistant to the Director
• Director of Development
• Digital Production Coordinator

Appleton's Books & Genealogy is a bookstore in Charlotte, North Carolina that has been operating for seven years. While Appleton’s has always been a "brick-and-mortar" walk-in bookstore, their mail order and Web business probably created more sales than the in-person customers did. Now Appleton’s has announced that they are closing the walk-in store in order to focus solely on Internet sales.

The idea of going to the Internet (only) is probably a good one. Genealogy bookstores are specialty businesses, each attracting relatively few customers in any geographic area. By moving to e-commerce on the Web, such a store can reach thousands more potential customers.

Several walk-in genealogy bookstores have already closed in the past few years, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more disappear before long. However, e-commerce on the Web appears to be growing as more and more people find that buying on the Web is easier than purchasing in stores. The old wives’ tale about credit card safety on the Web seems to finally be going away as well. The result is that small specialty retailers, such as genealogy bookstores, can succeed and flourish in the new electronic marketplace.

Ann Landers dispenses advice to the lovelorn and many others in her daily newspaper column. This week she published a "computer widow’s" suggestion to other women on how to cope with a husband who spends a lot of time with his computer, ignoring his wife. The advice? Take up genealogy!

Hmmm, I think these couples should buy a second computer as well.

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is being written and sent via e-mail at no charge. I expect to write one new issue on a more or less weekly basis. However, life sometimes interferes, and the need to earn a living may create an occasional delay.

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Many of the articles published in these newsletters contain quotes or references from others, especially from other Web sites, software user’s manuals, press releases and other public announcements. Any words in this newsletter attributed to another person or organization remain the copyrighted materials of the original author(s).

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The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2002 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.

 

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