Family Historian User Group

In relation to the 1921 Census.

satyricon wrote: ↑

29 Nov 2022 16:22

I would never trust the transcription unless I have no other choice. In my experience, I haven't had too much trouble with the details you are talking about, but the transcription of names, places and occupations (even where the handwriting is quite clear) is appalling.

Many of the Scottish transcriptions on the major databases are "transcription only". Has any one experience of the accuracy of these transcriptions:

• Through comparison with an image found elsewhere
• Through suspicion of the actual transmission appearing to say something inconsistent with evidence from elsewhere?

Thanks

I don't recall a huge number of discrepancies but have encountered a few, more often in Ancestry than in FMP.

For the Scottish census years where FMP has transcriptions (i.e. only up to 1901) I use FMP for the initial search because I have a subscription, and so I can view their transcriptions at no extra cost. When I am satisfied that I have found the right household then if there are no obvious discrepancies I sometimes don't bother to get the image. If I do want the image I go to the Scotlandspeople site, where you have to use credits to get the images. They still don't have a subscription option!

Ironically the ScotlandsPeople website itself doesn't provide full transcriptions of the households. You just have to search by name, place, age range (but cannot search by birthplace) and then hope you have found the right person in the results set. So being able to look at a full household transcription elsewhere first is quite useful.

LornaCraig wrote: ↑

05 Dec 2022 16:56

For the Scottish census years where FMP has transcriptions (i.e. only up to 1901) I use FMP for the initial search because I have a subscription, and so I can view their transcriptions at no extra cost. When I am satisfied that I have found the right household then if there are no obvious discrepancies I sometimes don't bother to get the image.

Thanks, that is pretty much what I do. Some level of confidence is helpful when you start to push at brick-walls - before you start using PPV.

I agree with Lorna FMP appear to have a better transcription than Ancestry. One area I have not yet checked on FMP is missing pages. On Ancestry I have found a number of missing pages which I suspect is due to poor quality images (I have copies of some of the pages I have found to be missing and some are poor quality). It is quite simple to identify if a page is missing due to the household schedule numbers for that page being missing. This is one area where Ancestry is much better than SP or FMP as it is possible to filter by Registration Number, E[numeration]D[istrict] and Household Schedule Number. By using these filters it is possible to "walk" the route taken by the enumerator.