Transcribing for Staffordshire FreeREG

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Transcribing for Staffordshire FreeREG

Postby dbraden » Fri May 21, 2021 2:53 pm

Hi Everyone,

I am the coordinator for the county of Staffordshire in the FreeREG project, whose goal is to transcribe the church and chapel registers of the UK and put them online for free. This is a volunteer project, and I would like to invite you to become a transcriber. We have many images of original documents to choose from, so if you have Staffordshire roots, we may have images of registers that contain records of your own ancestors. If you think you have exhausted what is online at Find My Past or Ancestry or Family Search, this is a good way to gain access to new material, some of it never transcribed before.

Let me address some of the most common concerns people have about transcribing, and offer a few inducements.

* You do not need any prior experience. All volunteers receive training, and it is very easy. If you are interested in a particular parish, you will quickly become familiar with the names of people and places and occupations, and this will make transcription easier and easier over time.

* You do not need to live in the UK. We currently have transcribers from all over the world.

* There are no deadlines, and everyone transcribes at a pace that fits their schedule. All we ask for is a commitment to some degree of regularity in your contributions so that it is clear that you are active.

* No special computer software is required. Most of use use a program called WinREG that was created especially for us, and it is free. It runs natively on Windows, but Mac users run it in the Parallels emulator. But you don't have to use WinREG. You can use any spreadsheet program, such as LibreOffice or Excel.

* You can give yourself explicit credit for your transcriptions if you wish, such that your name is displayed in your records when FreeREG users bring them up in a search. Or if you prefer to remain anonymous, that's fine, too. You can use your full name, your initials, or a pseudonym.

* FreeREG does not take ownership of your work. What you upload to the server is a copy, and you give FreeREG the right to incorporate that copy into its database. But you can keep your own copy and can do whatever you want with it. The account that you create when you sign up gives you access to your files on the FreeREG server, so that you can add to them, make corrections, download them, etc.

* We transcribe more than just the baptism, marriage and burial registers of the Church of England. We also transcribe nonconformist registers, and the burial registers of public cemeteries.

* There is a very active email forum especially for FreeREG transcribers that you can join if you wish. Transcribers can post questions and ask for second opinions on difficult readings. Some of the people in the forum have been transcribing for years and are exceptionally skilled.

* For Staffordshire FreeREG there is a monthly newsletter to keep you informed of news about Staffordshire records, and research articles to help you understand how the records were created. All team members are welcome to submit items for inclusion in the newsletters.

* Transcribers can view the online spreadsheet which tracks our progress and shows all that we know about what registers exist for the county, what we have transcribed, and what remains to be transcribed. The Staffordshire database currently contains nearly 3.7 million records, which represents an estimated 70% of the known pre-1900 registers. There is also a website for the Black Country part of Staffordshire (and including parts of Worcestershire, Shropshire, and Warwickshire) which shows where the original documents are kept, important details about the churches, and any anomalies or gaps in the registers.

If you, or anyone you know, are interested in volunteering, go to www.freereg.org.uk and click the Volunteer link in the main menu. Being the Staffordshire Coordinator, I am of course keen to have volunteers for Staffordshire, but if you are more interested in another county, just choose another one when you sign up. Each county has its own coordinator, although some coordinators manage more than one county.

best wishes,
Dale Braden
Staffordshire Coordinator
FreeREG
dbraden
 
Posts: 24
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2013 10:00 pm
Location: West Linn, Oregon, USA

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