About our Transcriptions

We try to make our transcriptions as accurate as possible. In order to do this, the work goes through several stages.

1. At our monthly working evenings hard copies of pages of whatever we are working on (at present Parish Registers) are distributed and everyone attempts to enter the data onto pre-printed sheets. We try to get an exact copy of the original text, including miss-spellings and abbreviations.

2. If the sheet appears to be reasonably accurate, it goes straight to computer entry. If there are problems (we have a wide variety of expertise in transcribing - especially for early records) the sheets are checked by a small group of two to three people using the film of the original parish register. Corrections are made and passed to computer entry.

3. The computer entry is done by volunteers at home. The exact text, plus extracted data - names, places etc into an Excel file.

4. The information is then checked again. If the sheets went straight to computer entry, it is checked against the film. If already corrected, the computer entry is checked for accuracy.

5. When the whole project is complete, the data is sorted to produce an alphabetical index, converted to PDF and the CD is produced.

Some of the earlier CDs were produced from other sources, but all have gone through a process of checking.