Genealogy Chat

Re "mgnv, is that cos the originals were unreadable do you think?"

Not clear what "that" refers to.

Unreadable's too strong, but apt sometimes. Usually the images weren't as clear as the Ancestry images. I note that now, when I look at an image, quite often there's a choice of images, and Ancestry is now often the default. I don't think this was the state of affairs a couple of years back. I first noticed Ancestry images appearing on the FreeBMD site abt 1 y ago. FreeBMD were missing half an index for one quarters marrs in the late 1880s - actually the quarter my mum's grandparents wed - I'd tried FreeBMD's "view images" link, and the quarter started at the L's, so I had her grandad but not her grannie Bagnall. (When I started, I didn't know that was her name, but I guessed that as it was mum's uncle's mid-name.) Then abt 1 y back, the view images link suddenly started showing them. It took maybe 6m before FreeBMD had transcribed them all. (Actually, it makes sense for Ancestry to supply them, as they use FreeBMD's transcriptions thru 1915.)

As to why there's 23 incomplete quarters pre-1915, it can't all be hand writing since 7 of the deaths are D1879q3-D1904q2, and all 4 quarters in 1879 are typed (incl the two incomplete ones). I don't know why these 23 incomplete quarters are so stalled - I don't keep any notes of progress, just the current status. I started July 2009, and there has been some change in these quarters, but not much. In the same time frame, there's a lesser #, but comparable, that have been cleared up, I think. I presume all the incomplete pages are assigned - maybe someone needs to follow up their progress or lack thereof, and maybe reassign the missing pages.

The 2 worst examples are D1959q1 and D1863q2 with 92%, 90% completion - both these are handwritten.


Progress for 1916-1949 is lollopping along - there's less than 100 incomplete q's for BMDs combined in this time frame.

mgnv, is that cos the originals were unreadable do you think? I'll pass your observation onto my relative, he seems to have some clout!

Given that most of the earlier records were transcribed from FreeBMD images which aren't usually as good as the later Ancestry version, I think even 8% is very creditable.

I just wish they'ld complete thru 1915 - they're incomplete for B1846q2, B1854q2, B1857q3, B1910q3, B1915q1; M1843q4 all with 98-99% completion, plus 17 quarters of deaths with 90-99% completion.

Thank you :-)

I was told by a distant relative I met at a funeral, who worked on the first edition of FreeBMD, that they are systematically undertaking a complete check of existing entries which have been transcribed from the earlier hand-written indexes, as a result of acquiring new reading equipment. My relative told me that the error rate was anything from 2% to 8% a page.

So keep checking!

Many thanks.

I'll have a look for a few that I am missing.

Thank you Nicky. Always interesting to know.

Elisabeth

Thank you for that

I see freeBMD has been updated today...


Nicky