Dear All,
I would like to know how many people responsible for the 1901
Census project have had experience of actually doing census
transcriptions?
I must have transcribed over 40,000 CEB entries and have
supervised university students doing the same.
I keep finding errors in my work and I'm fairly confident that
my work is no less accurate than that done by other academics.
I would challenge any professionally trained historian to
transcribe the CEBs I've seen for 1901 census without making at
least a few errors.
To expect prisoners or people who don't speak English as their
first language to do a good job beggars belief.
If the people responsible for the transcription did not spend at
least a day doing transcriptions before deciding how to proceed
on the main project - they should have done. That would have
given them a full appreciation of the problems and difficulties
involved.
David
On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 07:13:44 +0000 Michael J McCormick
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
# On 27/3/2002 21:41, "Marilynn Osment" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
#
# > This does not surprise me - the whole thing has been a shambles from start to
# > finish and I'd like to see some heads roll before too long.
# >
# Marilynn
#
# But they wonąt will they? The January minutes record some member of the
# family history <LATIN CAPITAL LIGATURE OE>great and the goodą saying that the shambles was not the
# fault of either the PRO or their contractors. No one is to blame it seems!
#
# In the meantime the Free Census project is busy transcribing and putting
# online the census returns for 1891 plus making a start on the 1841 returns.
# If you want a job done properly, do it yourself!
#
# Rgds
#
# Michael
# Free Census Project
# http://freecen.rootsweb.com/
#
---------------------------------
David Alan Gatley (Dr),
School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Staffordshire University,
Stoke-on-Trent,
ST4 2XW
Telephone 01782-294780 (Office)
01782-415340 (Home)
Fax 01782-294760
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/sociology
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/census
-------------------------------
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author, and not necessarily those of Staffordshire University.
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