Indexer provides information not specifically provided in the record

BJGW

I'm reviewing UK, England, Diocese of Blackburn—Church of England Parish Registers, 1813–2021 [Part A][M3FN-5G5]

This seems like a pittance of a question to ask but I'm functioning under the directive to "only type what you see" which I've always interpreted to mean don't type what you don't see even if it's fairly simple to figure it out, i.e., don't provide a birth year if it wasn't in the record even if you've got an age and can do the math. If that's the case, do I delete information that wasn't provided by the record even if there's a field for it and it can be determined accurately such as this indexer has done?

Melissa S Himes

HI @BJGW Yes, if the birth year is not on the image, you must delete it on review. We don't calculate dates and we make no assumptions. Even if an image said that a person was born on Christmas Day, we wouldn't assume that to be Dec 25th since they could have born on Orthodox Christmas Day, January 7th. We also cannot make an assumption that a person was born in the same year they were baptized.

The field helps in this project do provide a priority listings for marriage dates, but, they do not allow us to do much except look back to determine the first two digits of the year:

"Type the 4-digit number for the year. 

If only a 2-digit number was recorded, you can sometimes determine the first 2 digits of the 4-digit year from other information, such as the project dates or other contextual information on the image.  

If you cannot determine the 4-digit year, index the 2-digit number. If you cannot determine the 2-digit or 4-digit year, press Ctrl+B to mark this field blank. "

WPBA

The best way to answer this questions is to check the field helps and the project instructions to see if there is guidance about estimating such things as dates. The index is only there to find people and does not need to contain all information in the record. In checking the instructions for this project it is not too clear what you do about birth years. Sometimes with births they only add the year if it is different to the main year or the year is assumed from the first record in the list of baptisms.

If a date is missing from the source document, try to determine at least the year. Records are often listed chronologically, and you might be able to determine the year by looking at the previous or next image for the record.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-index-a-record-with-missing-dates

BJGW

aHA! I thought so! I was afraid I was being too picky but da rules is da rules.

tndavis

One thing to remember, though (from the PI of the Middlesex Parish registers): "In register-type documents, the event year was generally written just once for multiple records. This date applies to all subsequent records until a new date was indicated." So for these, even though you don't see the year written for every entry, you can include it with your indexing/reviewing. Check your PI to see if this applies to your batch.

Melissa S Himes

But, also remember, that if there is no project instruction that says to do a look back to the reference images, and it isn't on the image, then the date is blank.