When you push the "Save" button after transcribing a census record the record goes into a queue for review. Kristin Yarnell and I do the reviewing. We don't have time to carefully compare your input with the census record. Instead we re-organize the data and look at areas where there are consistent problems.

You can help with this and save us a great deal of time by running a quick review yourself. And you can do a better and more efficient job of reviewing than we can because the records are still fresh in your minds.

    Here's how I do a review:
    Filter the database for the enumeration district, page and side you just entered:

Enumeration District  = 182
    Page = 11
    Side = B

Set the fields so the problem areas will display:

    Census Scope, Name, Relation to Head, Sex, Marital Status, POB, POB Father, POB Mother, Employment, Unemployed, Unemployed Weeks, Profession, Industry, Own/Rent, Mortgage, Home/Farm. Include Notes to remind yourself of problems you may have run into.

Set the Sort function to Census Schedule. This will display the records by line number.
The most consistent error is not providing the home ownership information for the Head of the Household. To check this filter by Relationship to Head = Head. You can clearly see if you've entered the information. There should be no blanks for home ownership.

If there are fix them by pressing the "Edit" key, editing and re-saving. After finishing you can remove the filter for Head. David Furber has made some of this obsolete by re-writing the data entry screen so you can't save the record for a Head of Household if you haven't entered the appropriate ownership information. Still good to check.

The next most common error is not having a value for profession. Even if that is "None" you must write "None" and it should be capitalized.

If the person is a wage earner (W) there should be unemployment information. Hard to enforce this because the enumerators weren't always consistent. Note that the value for "Weeks Unemployed" must be "0" not "none," even if the enumerator wrote "none."

After that it's mostly just looking for consistency. Capitalize professions and industries. Look at Place of Birth. When this is a foreign born person the record should ideally be a two or three letter abbreviation (this is the country of birth) and then the language, written out. There should be a space between them, but no punctuation (Ger German; Ire English, etc.). Enumerators really messed this up so we have to work a little harder to make it consistent.

Cast a skeptical eye at unusual names and occupations. It's always worth checking the City Directory. I recently saw "Tlagar" as a last name. Not on this planet. It turned out to be Flanagan. But names are worth a whole column themselves. Send me examples of ones that have stumped you or took some sleuthing to figure out.

Thanks for taking that extra step. Looks like a lot of work but it just takes a few minutes and saves us a bunch of time and make a cleaner data base for researchers.


And you can always ask for help: rk14@cornell.edu