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Have you ever thought that YOU could help towards the transcribing
of the register office indexes
for the area that your ancestors
lived in, or would you just like to do your bit for
Lancashire
family history and the unique BMD project?
I often look back with pride to the days when our branch got
involved and transcribed
the 1881 census for our part of Lancashire, this was back
in 1993, yes 15 years ago.
Well things have moved on since those days, most of you now have
computers, digital cameras, mobile phones and of course, the
internet,
Most of you are now also conversant with word processing,
and entering data into spreadsheets etc.
Lancaster and Morecambe branch have been involved since the start of
LancashireBMD project
and have transcribed all of the Marriage
indexes for our North-West part of Lancashire;
Lunesdale, Lancaster
& Garstang districts 1837-1980.
The much bigger task of transcribing all the birth records for the
same area commenced in 2007,
as the indexes are now housed at the
new Preston Registration Service office,
this has meant weekly trips
for me to the Preston office to record the index books.
Our
preferred way of recording the indexes is to take a photographic
image of each page,
instead of photocopying, and this system has
served us very well over the past few years,
We have certainly saved
a lot of trees, chemicals and of course
we don't need to hog the
photocopier at the registration office.
Once the digital image is on the computer it can be sent to anyone
around the world to be transcribed,
and for this job we recommend
that you open two Windows on your monitor screen,
it is then a very
simple job to transcribed directly into a Works or Excel spreadsheet
while reading the image alongside, there are only three columns of
data to be in typed; Surname, Forenames and Page number
you will
soon find that the task becomes quite simple and very interesting,
speed is not important, accuracy is,
I consider the page number and
surname to be the most important pieces of data.
your work is only
the first step before the checkers compare it to the original entry
in the registers,
correct errors and then add the mothers maiden
name.
After the final check the data is then uploaded for free
access on the internet.
I am still using the same old Olympus digital camera that
photographed all the Marriage indexes at Lancaster register office,
I use the cameras lowest resolution and the JPEG image file size is
around 270KB,
a book of 500 births can have sixteen images, so a
total file of 4.3MB could be sent to you.
Members transcribing in
the Lancaster area can have lots of images by CD ROM
but for out of
my area members,
I can only send them by email. peterjoslin@btinternet.com
To view the image on your monitor we use a free, but very powerful
program called ‘IrfanView’
that can be downloaded from the internet
http://www.irfanview.com/
or it can be sent to you.
The software allows you to quickly enlarge the image, alter the
contrast or brightness,
sharpen or reverse the image and lots of
other things too.
If you would like to try and transcribe some
births you would be helping the project immensely
and I am only too
pleased to talk to you and get you going,
I am available by phone on
01524 420841
You may even be able to l
transcribe areas that your own family history research covers;
Warton, Arkhome, Tunstall, Hornby, Caton, Ellel, Heaton, Morecambe,
Cockerham, Garstang,
Stalmine, St Michaels, Pressall and, of course,
the district with the largest number of books; Lancaster.
Please have a go,
you will find it interesting and you will come
across many unusual names in the indexes,
do expect to make some
mistakes, we all do.
This system of transcribing is an ideal opportunity for Overseas and
out of County members
to get involved with a Lancashire project.
The benefits of UKBMD are well known;
of all the research aides for
finding civil Births, Deaths and Marriages 1837- 2000,
it will be
the only fully corrected source
that has been checked back to the
original entries on the certificates, by dedicated volunteers,
and
at no cost to the government or tax-payer.
This will certainly be the definitive GRO index
Well done all of you, & Thank You!
Peter W. Joslin (Coordinator for Lancaster & Morecambe projects)
Checking procedure at the Preston office
Each week, for the past two years, members of our branch have
travelled to the Registration office on a Friday
to check the transcriptions with the original registers. This not
only checks for the spellings of Surname,
Given Name, Partner, Mother and Age at time of Death but, give us
the opportunity to correct all the entries.
After checking, a unique code is added to each event, this enables
the Certificate Services to issue you
with your loved ones certificate; be it, Birth, Marriage or Death at
a cost of £7.00.
I know from experience that most certificates are issued to the
public within 10 minutes of being ordered.
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