Recording 'White' in Mortality Schedules where 'Color' is blank
From the Federal US Census instructions, the recorders for the 1860 Mortality Schedules were instructed to "leave the space blank" if the person is 'white'. I do not see any mention in the indexing instructions for this fact and for indexers to enter 'White' when the 'Color' column square is left blank. This issue should be noted in the Indexing Mortality instructions for 1860.
From 1870 and later, they were instructed to NOT leave it blank. But it seems many still followed the 1860 instructions and left the box blank for white. If you look at the bottom of the Mortality form there is a tally for the number of 'White' & 'Blacks' which can be used to indicate that the blank boxes actually indicate a 'White' status.
Both these issue should be addressed in the Indexing Mortality general instructions that blank 'Color' boxes can indicate a 'White' status if the bottom tallies corroborate.
Anyone else have comments on this?
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@Rick Z, it sounds like what you want is transcription, not indexing. They're different things. An index is not data: it is just a means of finding data.
It is unfortunately true that all of the online genealogy sites, FS included, treat indexes as if they were computerized transcriptions. For example, Source Linker will only allow users to tag conclusions that correspond to an indexed field (with a highly literal-minded idea of correspondence, to boot). If the source actually supports other conclusions, you have to add those tags manually, outside of Source Linker. However, I don't think the solution to this problem is to make indexes into transcriptions. That would add totally-unnecessary time and effort to the "indexing" process, and create an unwieldy database cluttered with mostly-irrelevant details that it would take extra time for the search algorithms to wade through.
I have ideas about how to fix Source Linker instead, but this is not the right category for that discussion.
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I think they just want to make it simple. If the race isn't written or notated on the document, Blank it. We're not to have to look for the recorder's instructions. Our job is to enter what's on the document. There's no option to indicate race when searching the index on Family Search, anyway.
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@barbaragailsmith1, the collection-specific search pages for some U.S. censuses have an option to turn on a "race" search field. (For example, 1870: https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1438024.) But I agree fully that it is not the indexer's job to fill in a field that's blank on the document. We're creating a finding aid, not a transcription or analysis.
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Thank you for your comments. I kind of expected the responses to be in the direction of 'don't do more than is requested'. And I can mostly concur as the instructions must be simple and clear so that even novice and unexperienced indexers can easily perform the task consistently and accurately.
But I brought up this issue because I have see so much information on documents that does not get indexed and that can be vital in identifying a related person. I have a family line where the meager progress I have made over the last 25 years has been from the small fragments of information that turn up in my research. While my desire to have all information on documents indexed is not something that can realistically happen now, I will continue to work to find methods to improve the indexing process and make it more effective. This may take getting involved in the technical developer area for indexing.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi: You make a very good point about 'transcription' vs an 'index'. I had totally overlooked the definition of indexing and associated the process with data collection.
To capture all the data from documents and get it into a comprehensive, organized collection one would need the help of an well designed AI program.
And I agree with you on Source Linker. Every time I use it I notice some feature that I wish would be improved.
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