Death Certificate Indexing Question
Hello!
I am indexing Kentucky Death Certificates. The Project instructions state that the Informant's name should not be indexed as the spouse of the deceased, unless it is specifically stated that the Informant is listed as 'husband' or 'wife'. It does not go on to instruct the indexer if the fields should be marked blank.
I have a record where the Informant has the same last name as the deceased, but no indication if it is the spouse, daughter, niece, etc. I just want to ensure that I am indexing this correctly. I chose to mark all the 'Spouse' fields as blank, since (again), there is no indication of the relationship of the Informant to the Deceased. Did I do that correctly?
Answers
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Yes, the Spouse field should be marked blank if it cannot be determined if it is the husband or wife. The spouse fields (first or last name) are required to have a blank or a name as they are required fields as shown with the(*) . They cannot be left without anything.
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You, and Dave, are correct to leave the fields blank. I did come across one record where "husband" was written next to the informant's name. Don't know why they don't have a "Spouse" field on the form itself. I think some other state's do.
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Doing Kentucky death certificates. Which number is the record number ? Several numbers are located in upper rt corner
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The record number is the dark typed number in the upper right. According to the project instructions, you do not use the the first 2 numbers(66,67,etc.). These are the year number. Only use the last 4 numbers.
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Depending on how late in the year a death occurred, you will have 1 to 5 numbers. I have a batch now that are four numbers; the deaths occurred in April. I've also had deaths with this project that occurred on December 30 that are five numbers. I've only had one batch with Cook County Death Records (it might have been Chicago records), that had one number; these occurred January 1st. You may encounter things like 3333, 11111 or 9999 for death cert numbers.
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If you click on Project Instructions, there are several examples under What to Index. Individual Field Helps are available when your cursor is in that field by clicking on the purple question mark.
Project instructions can vary from project to project, so it's helpful to review them before starting each new project.
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