Indexing U.S. Wisconsin pre 1907 Death Records
One of the fields asks for the residence of the deceased. However, the death record forms used by Wisconsin (and on this project) do not even have a field for "residence of the deceased." What they have is a field for "residence of the respondent!"
Some programmer should go in and do two things: first, eliminate that field which doesn't exist on the form; second, go into all of the reviewed, completed forms, and delete any responses other than "blank" in this field.
One last note. Where can you send notes directly to the programmers, instead of this nebulous forum where I don't know who or when this note will even be read?
Thanks!
Comments
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I am reading it!! What we have to remember is that in a project there can be multiple forms. With some forms some of the information will not appear but in other forms it will. The owners decide how they want that handled. One size does not fit all in most projects!
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I'm indexing the same death records, and had the same concern, as well as several others. Why bother to have a line for "deceased's suffix" when you don't want it, even if it were to be provided? It's a wasted entry, when other valuable info (such as birth date, birth location, marital condition, name of spouse, etc.) isn't even requested. Why ask only for "death county," when often all that is provided is the city, or in the case of "Racine" it could be either city OR county, but since it's not specified and I'm not supposed to assume, I have to mark it "Blank"? Why ask for the mother's maiden name, but only if it is specifically identified as such? Even if it's a name from a prior marriage, it still has value in searching and identifying. Why prohibit the indexer from drawing logical conclusions, such as when the deceased's maiden name is listed, but not her parents' names--I could assume the listed maiden name is also the surname of her father, but I'm instructed not to "assume the surname of an individual based on the surname of someone else" so I have to mark it "Blank." The instructions often seem needlessly and mindlessly restrictive, and it's frustrating to feel I'm passing up important info and thus wasting my time, as well as the time of those who will be searching for their ancestors.
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