Purpose of Indexing - Make it more searchable by the users
A lot of thought goes on as we index as to what the intent was, what the record is, etc. All interesting stuff, but I think we need to keep the focus on how to make the names searchable for the user. In that regard, I would like to see an form that keeps these group of names together as that may help the researcher a great deal. They may know the name Esther, and maybe Felix and Napolean, which would help them do a search using all those names, and find this record. Otherwise, the names, as listed separately are rather cumbersome for a researcher, as it would be if individual names were listed on a census record rather than households.
Comments
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Unfortunately, you have not given any examples that would enable us to understand exactly what you are referring to and/or how these problems might be overcome.
If you are referring to the indexing of, say, a batch of christenings that took place in a parish during a certain period, these should be generally quite easy to connect. The researcher simply inputs a surname, place and time range and adds the parents names. This would produce a list of results for, say, all the children christened to John and Mary Brown at Durham between 1810 and 1825.
However, if the indexing project instructions do not include indexing certain detail (like the names of the child's parents) this would produce difficulties.
Incidentally, census records do not necessarily include the whole of the household - e.g. if these are listed over two pages in the original documents - so connecting all family members through FamilySearch census records can be even more difficult than for christenings, etc.!
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