Give a Little, Gain a Lot

You may already have benefited from indexed records as you’ve researched your family tree online and perhaps wondered what goes into compiling these time-saving databases.  One way is through the genealogy community getting together and giving just a little time to make free indexes possible. 

For the last few years, Who Do You Think You Are? magazine has sponsored “Transcription Tuesday”, in partnership with several recordkeeping organisations.  Simply put, it involves you reading a digitised original record and typing key pieces of information from it into a spreadsheet or free software, on your computer at home.  Full instructions are given for each project, especially where handwriting or language may present problems for the English reader. 

The results of your participation are then compiled into free-to-search indexes to the records, making them much more accessible and saving time trawling through them looking for names.  These datasets will be made available through the sponsoring organisations.

This year’s Transcription Tuesday takes place on the 4^th of February.  Why not check out the four projects on offer and see which one you’d like to contribute to on the day?  I’ve included details and links below for each project, and added WDYTYA? Magazine’s “difficulty rating” for a bit of context, with a grade of 1 being the easiest.

Stobs Camp Internment Research Centre – to take part in this project, download a spreadsheet from this Google Drive link.  Stobs was a WWI prisoner of war/detention camp in the Scottish Borders and this will be the perfect transcription job for you if you are a military history buff or you can read a bit of German or French.  Graded 3 for difficulty

Royal Navy – this project aims to build a free database of RN ratings and officers from WWI, and it’s being jointly run by The National Archives, the National Maritime Museum, and the Crew List Index Project.  If you would like to work on these records, email crewlists@nationalarchives.gov.uk by 21 January.  Graded 2 for difficulty

Ancestry West Midlands Police Records – this could be the most fiddly project to join as it requires you to have an Ancestry account (you can sign up for free with them) and download special transcription software from their Ancestry World Archives Project page.  The project aims to index constabulary records from the mid-19^th century to the 1940s.  Graded 2 for difficulty.

FamilySearch Parish Registers – including parishes from a variety of English counties, this year’s FamilySearch project covers nonconformist church records.  Sign up at https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/.  After Transcription Tuesday, you can continue indexing with FamilySearch on their wide range of records from around the world.  This is an ideal project if you haven't transcribed or indexed records before.  Graded 1 for difficulty

Transcription Tuesday is a great way to collaborate and give back to the genealogy community.  You could even get together with family or fellow genealogists and hold your own transcription event.  If you use social media, you can share how you're participating on Twitter with the hashtag #TranscriptionTuesday or on Facebook at the WDYTYA Magazine group.