Enlisted and Officer Muster Rolls and Rosters, 1916–1939 [Part O][M3KF-122] repeated name

jeannemargaretdent1

If a name (with exact military #) appears twice on the document, do you index the name just once?

For instance, name Bascon Juan appears under the PRIVATES and then again under LOSSES

Susan Ann Mullen

• Other than the instruction to index all of the records on an image that John referred to there is no instruction anywhere in the project telling us NOT to index any names except in What to Index, bullet point 3, "Do not index the name of the person preparing the record of monthly rolls and monthly rosters unless the person is also listed on the roster or roll itself."

Since we are not told to not index duplicates then we must go ahead and index every name except those indicated in the What to Index instructions.

maryellenstevensbarnes1

@jeannemargaretdent1, I couldn't open your batch, but the instructions and field helps say to index the same exact name only once -- smart of you to notice the military number is exactly the same in both instances, that means he is the same person -- have a great evening -- Mary😎

John Empoliti

Note: Unlike many projects these days, the instructions for the Muster Rolls and Rosters project are silent on the handling of duplicate “names”/entries. Here from the What to Remember section of the Instructions was an opportunity to make this distinction, and it wasn’t made.

• Register images often show multiple records. This project is preset to 40 records per image. Entries may need to be added or deleted in the data entry area to index all of the records on an image or remove any extra blank entries.

During the Indexing Chat days we asked for clarification on this issue in response to a specific question regarding an earlier part of this project, and we we told yes to index two instances of the same, identical name on the same page.

I don’t see the point of including duplicates for FS search purposes. I suppose the data owners might have a reason. In my experience, our system deletes two adjacent instances of the same name I.e., entries that are identical in every field, and maybe just in every required field. To me this suggests the “spirit” of FS thinking about this issue. It would take much more programming effort, and slow down the submission process, to seek out and remove all non-adjacent duplicates, otherwise I suspect that would also be done.

if it is a “general (sometimes unspoken) rule” not to include/index duplicate entries, then I suggest that it be promoted to become a General Indexing Guideline. Then projects that want duplicates can say so, as an exception, and we won’t need to guess.

The Moderators may want to check on the preference of the current Project Manager on this issue.

John Empoliti

@annewandering - Thanks for the updated guidance on this.