Transcription Tuesday: Stobs Military Camp WW1 project

For further information on this coming Transcription Tuesday's four projects, including the Scottish project to find the names of those interned at Stobs Military Camp in the First World War, please visit https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2020/02/transcription-tuesday-stobs-military.html.

* This blog will cease to carry news from February 14th, with Scottish GENES (https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com) taking over from then. You can subscribe to Scottish GENES for a daily email feed in the right hand column on the page, at the top.

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The GENES Blog Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

WDYTYA magazine announces Transcription Tuesday event

From Who Do You Think You Are? magazine:

Volunteers needed to transcribe an Edwardian book of railway accidents in a day

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth, the Modern Records Centre and the National Railway Museum (NRM) are looking for volunteers to help transcribe a book of railway worker accidents spanning 1901–1907 in just 24 hours. The project is one of three that have been chosen as part of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine’s annual Transcription Tuesday event, which this year takes place on 5 February 2019.

Transcription Tuesday was launched in 2017 by Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, to encourage family and local historians to get involved in transcription projects. “The internet has transformed family history,” said editor Sarah Williams, “but the documents that are going online need to be transcribed or indexed to make them searchable, and for many projects the only way that is going to happen is with the help of volunteers.”

One of the projects chosen for Transcription Tuesday this year is the Railway Work, Life and Death project (railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk), and its organisers have set a challenge to the Transcription Tuesday volunteers – to transcribe an entire 119-page volume of railway worker accidents in a day. Each page has, on average, 18 accidents reported, meaning that by the end of the day about 2,150 records could be available for future family historians to discover details of their railway worker ancestors.

“Accidents to railway workers were sadly common at the start of the 20th century, with around 15,000 deaths and injuries each year,” said Dr Mike Esbester of the University of Portsmouth, co-leader of the project. “This volume was created by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, the biggest railway trade union [known today as the RMT], to record accidents and legal cases involving its members. Until Transcription Tuesday it was only available in hard copy, at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, which meant it was rarely consulted. Transcribing it will hugely increase its use.”

Other records being indexed on Transcription Tuesday are Warwickshire witness statements from the county’s quarter sessions with Warwickshire Bytes and a range of parish registers in association with FamilySearch. “This year we want to make Transcription Tuesday the biggest yet,” said Sarah Williams. “We hope to see hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers from across the world join together and give something back to family history.”

To find out more about the day, the projects and how to get involved visit: www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/transcriptiontuesday

Sample page from the railway accidents book that volunteers will transcribe on 

Transcription Tuesday 2019 

(Modern Records Centre)

Chris

For my genealogy guide books, visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html, whilst details of my research service are at www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk. Further content is also published daily on The GENES Blog Facebook page at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES.

North Tipperary records added to RootsIreland

Tipperary North Genealogy Centre has added the Roman Catholic parish of Loughmore-Castleiney from 1798-1899 to its database at www.tipperarynorth.rootsireland.ie, also accessible via www.rootsireland.ie.

COMMENT: RootsIreland is a transcript based site, and currently the largest online presence for Irish parish records available. I just wanted to flag up an example of how the site can both hinder and yet help at the same time.

Last week I was trying to locate a marriage from Ulster for a couple that I believed were Church of Ireland in terms of their religious denomination. I had located children from the mid-1860s, but could find no marriage on GRONI's GENI site (www.geni.nidirect.gov.uk), which was odd, as the civil registration of Anglican marriages commenced in April 1845. There was similarly nothing in the Anglican parish records, which I consulted on microfilm in PRONI. As a last resort, I tried to find the marriage on RootsIreland. The couple I was searching for was a Robert McCOLLUM and a Letitia MOONEY, and no such entry was found. However, a Roman Catholic record in the same village dating back to 1850 was located for a couple called Patrick McCOLLUM and Letitia MONEY. It seemed unlikely, but I took a look at the microfilm anyway - and found that the RootsIreland transcript was in fact wrong. Not only was 'Patrick McCOLLUM' in fact a mistranscribed 'Robert McCOLLUM', but 'Letitia MONEY' was in fact recorded in the Catholic register as 'Letty MONEY' - Letty was what she was recorded as in some of the children's records that I had previously found. The fact that it was the right couple was confirmed when I later discovered that their (known about) first daughter was in fact baptised as Roman Catholic also. Not only had the transcriber misinterpreted Robert as Patrick, but he or she, for reasons best known to him/her, had also deliberately changed Letty to the more formal version of Letitia, which is not at all what was recorded in the register.

This flags up two points - the first is that the RootsIreland database can be exceptionally helpful as a finding aid. The second is, however, that it can also make some fairly spectacular mistakes with its transcripts. The moral here is that if using a transcription site (and RootsIreland is but one of many), ALWAYS check the original records if you can also. With Irish Roman Catholic registers this will become certainly much easier to do when the National Library of Ireland places its digitised microfilms online for free next summer 2015.

Chris

Stuck for a Christmas gift?! I have a series of genealogy books available in the UK, Australia and Canada, on Scottish, Irish and British based subject areas. Further details at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. Santa approves!

Irish Catholic parish register images to go online next year

For those of you constantly frustrated with the inability of RootsIreland to provide a working site that caters for all of the needs of the humble genealogist, there is some exceptionally good news on the cards - the National Library of Ireland is to place online digitised images of its Roman Catholic parish register microfilms by the summer of next year. This has something that it has been hoping to do for a few years now, but it looks like it is now on target to finally achieve this. Genealogist John Grenham has the full detail at www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/john-grenham-irish-roots-1.2017344.

There will be a few issues for researchers when this goes online, not least the very unique way that many of the Catholic registers were microfilmed, in a back to front ordered system, but this will be a breakthrough in online access - not least of which the fact that transcribers will be in like Flynn to help make their contents accessible. And just to add to the good news - these records are for the whole of Ireland, north and south (in most cases going up to 1880, in some cases up to 1900)

I took out a month long subscription to RootsIreland a couple of weeks back, and have found it to be the most frustrating experience in a long time, with its ridiculous search restrictions that make it impossible to use properly. It recently imposed a subscription system, something people have been crying out for for a long time, only to then restrict the types of searches that you could previously do. At long last though, a revolution is about to happen on this front - as John notes in his piece, "It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of what is about to happen." Roll on the 21st century...

(With thanks to John Grenham, and the North of Ireland FHS via Facebook)

UPDATE: The full press release is at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/more-on-irish-catholic-records-going.html

Chris

Stuck for a Christmas gift?! I have a series of genealogy books available in the UK, Australia and Canada, on Scottish, Irish and British based subject areas. Further details at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. Santa approves!

Smithsonian Institute launches Transcription Centre site

This one is interesting, courtesy of the American magazine, Family Tree (not to be confused with the British one of the same name!). It concerns the Smithsonian Institution's new Transcription Centre website at https://transcription.si.edu/ to crowdsource a volunteer effort to make its records even more accessible. The article is available at http://blog.familytreemagazine.com/insider/2014/08/22/SmithsonianLaunchesWebsiteToCrowdsourceOldDocumentTranscriptions.aspx.

Chris

Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And please consider purchasing the great new version of Caledonia by The Libations at 79p via www.caledonia2014.com - all profits go to help fund Scottish foodbanks