Need help on Column Translation in Namibia Dutch Ref Church Records MQVV-9KN

Mary Rice

I have several years of indexing DRC Church Records experience in South Africa, but need assistance translating the headings on this and similar records. It is a Church Index and we are to index Baptisms/Births/Christenings from them. Some have Birth Dates but I cannot understand the next columns of dates and if one of them is a Baptism date. I have scanned the last month of Community Indexing Help without finding a discussion on this topic.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

Headings on that page

Member register
Member
Of
Full Name
Date of birth
Confession of Faith
Date Admitted
Date Given
Teacher
Arrived
When
From where
Departure
When
Where to
Remarks

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I have encountered enough ridiculous errors in indexing to stand very firmly by my belief that if you don't know the language(s) on it, you shouldn't index the image.

Granted, the image in question basically consists of names and all-numeric dates, so as "foreign language indexing" goes, it's probably pretty safe — but there's still the possibility that one of those names isn't actually a name, but something like the "halvaszületett" or "ismeretlen" that non-Hungarian-speaking indexers input as names All The Time.

Mary Rice

@Áine Ní Donnghaile Thank you for you kind reply. I am looking for a date for Baptism which I don't think is any of the one's on your list, but some indexers are putting the Confession of Faith as the Baptismal date.

gary_noble

The project is a complete mess...

A Lidmateregister is a membership register. Under the PI instructions of what to index, point 2, FS has put this absurb instruction: "Membership records should be indexed using the baptism/birth/christening template"

Back in 2017 when the Namibia project first came up, there was a membership option on the record type dropdown. This time not. Our SA indexing group requested a takedown and rework of the project, but have been told no.

The dooplidmaat images are even more of a mess because they are split over 2 pages, page one being the childs name and baptism, page 2 being the right hand page of the register with parents names. Unfortunately the way the project was set up there is only image per batch, either page 1 or page 2, so somebody else gets the other image in another batch. Indexers have not used reference images. So many indexers have decided to create a marriage record for the parents names using the membership date.

Under PI what to remember about this project, point 3 they say "If a record does not include a name for the principal person, you should still index the record, marking the principal name fields blank and indexing other names, such as names of the parents, along with any other fields that are present on the record".

Then under point 7 they then contradict point 3 by saying: Some records may continue to or from another image and you may need to view another image to get information for the fields on the image you are indexing. For help with images spannign multiple images, view "What to Do When Records Span 2 Images or to View Additional Images" in the "General Indexing Guidelines" section below".

Mary Rice

@gary_noble Thank you for that information. I agree with the confusion of PI as I am left wondering what to do with information that is a register but doesn't fit in that format. Well, this project is apparently almost finished so it's a mute point. I can imagine that there will be many "mistakes", sadly for the peoples of Namibia who desire this genealogical reference.