Reviewing Middlesex B where several whole entires are unreadable

Alan Chard

https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/f962cb17-eea7-47ec-a757-0f6553267ec0

This is a general question about reviewing when an indexer has omitted multiple unreadable entries.

I'm using this batch as an example, I've not yet reached the bottom of the first page but can see that several entries may be unreadable. On a previous batch that I reviewed the last 3 entries on a page were unreadable except for the date at the right-hand side, the indexer had skipped those 3 entries. In that case I added 3 entries and marked the appropriate fields as unreadable.

The General Guidelines cover marking a whole entry unreadable, but not the case where several consecutive entries are unreadable as in this batch. Should the reviewer add those if they are missing ? Will those completely unreadable entries be filtered out later in the process of adding the records to the database?

Melissa S Himes

Hello Alan. On this batch it appears that the indexer could read all the entries from 1 - 44 and then the paper is water stained, damaged, and unreadable. They begin with entry 45 from the right hand side of the image. I know you haven't gotten there yet, but, entry 44 looks like George P*ela to me. But even with the contrast adjustments, it is difficult. I can read one towards the end that could be Given Name Eliz* and the next might be Cha*

In my opinion, there is little value for creating more than one record that is going to say nothing more than burial date: Jan 1761. They would simply be placeholders, which should be deleted on submission because they are sequential duplicate entries. I think having one record with nothing but Jan 1761 might be of value, as it would pull up a record on a search where the researcher knew the person was buried in 1761.

This instruction from the General Guidelines for Unreadable Information applies, although I was taught that if you couldn't read any of the names, then you didn't need to create a record. This instruction leaves me questioning that advice.

• Entire record. When all of the information in an entire record is unreadable, including the name, date, and any information for other required fields, mark the record as Unreadable. Press Ctrl+Shift+U.

NB: Since the shared batch on this will go away on submission, I will include a link to the image on the film. This will help with training purposes when anyone might be seeking information on what to do with unreadable information due to damage to the document.

https://www.familysearch.org/records/images/image-details?imageGroupNumbers=008040993&rmsId=TH-909-67679-87899-64&imageIndex=270&singleView=true

Alan Chard

Thank you Melissa - really useful clarification and help; as a former IT person I expected that entire blank records would be deleted rather than making it into the database, but the information is so useful to have. I hope this is useful for others too.

Susan Ann Mullen

The Project Instructions most often say that a record needs at least a name to be indexed. Be careful though because there are exceptions to that rule.

The ones marked as unreadable are not going to be searchable which makes sense.