Hi Everyone,
I am the coordinator for the county of Staffordshire in the FreeREG
project, whose goal is to transcribe the church and chapel registers
of the UK and put them online for free. This is a volunteer project,
and I would like to invite you to become a transcriber. We have many
images of original documents to choose from, so if you have
Staffordshire roots, we may have images of registers that contain
records of your own ancestors. If you think you have exhausted what
is online at Find My Past or Ancestry or Family Search, this is a good
way to gain access to new material, some of it never transcribed
before.
Let me address some of the most common concerns people have about
transcribing, and offer a few inducements.
* You do not need any prior experience. All volunteers receive
training, and it is very easy. If you are interested in a
particular parish, you will quickly become familiar with the names
of people and places and occupations, and this will make
transcription easier and easier over time.
* You do not need to live in the UK. We currently have transcribers
from all over the world.
* There are no deadlines, and everyone transcribes at a pace that fits
their schedule. All we ask for is a commitment to some degree of
regularity in your contributions so that it is clear that you are
active.
* No special computer software is required. Most of use use a program
called WinREG that was created especially for us, and it is free.
It runs natively on Windows, but Mac users run it in the Parallels
emulator. But you don't have to use WinREG. You can use any
spreadsheet program, such as LibreOffice or Excel.
* You can give yourself explicit credit for your transcriptions if you
wish, such that your name is displayed in your records when FreeREG
users bring them up in a search. Or if you prefer to remain
anonymous, that's fine, too. You can use your full name, your
initials, or a pseudonym.
* FreeREG does not take ownership of your work. What you upload to
the server is a copy, and you give FreeREG the right to incorporate
that copy into its database. But you can keep your own copy and can
do whatever you want with it. The account that you create when you
sign up gives you access to your files on the FreeREG server, so
that you can add to them, make corrections, download them, etc.
* We transcribe more than just the baptism, marriage and burial
registers of the Church of England. We also transcribe
nonconformist registers, and the burial registers of public
cemeteries.
* There is a very active email forum especially for FreeREG
transcribers that you can join if you wish. Transcribers can post
questions and ask for second opinions on difficult readings. Some
of the people in the forum have been transcribing for years and are
exceptionally skilled.
* For Staffordshire FreeREG there is a monthly newsletter to keep you
informed of news about Staffordshire records, and research articles
to help you understand how the records were created. All team
members are welcome to submit items for inclusion in the
newsletters.
* Everyone can view the online spreadsheet which tracks our progress
and shows all that we know about what registers exist for the
county, what we have transcribed, and what remains to be
transcribed. The Staffordshire database currently contains nearly
3.7 million records, which represents an estimated 70% of the known
pre-1900 registers. There is also a website for the Black Country
part of Staffordshire (and including parts of Worcestershire,
Shropshire, and Warwickshire) which shows where the original
documents are kept, important details about the churches, and any
anomalies or gaps in the registers.
If you, or anyone you know, are interested in volunteering, go to
https://www.freereg.org.uk and click the Volunteer link in the main menu.
Being the Staffordshire Coordinator, I am of course keen to have
volunteers for Staffordshire, but if you are more interested in
another county, just choose another one when you sign up. Each county
has its own coordinator, although some coordinators manage more than
one county.
If you have questions, you can either reply to this message or contact
me via the RootsChat Personal Messaging system.
best wishes,
Dale Braden
Staffordshire Coordinator
FreeREG
