OPC Projects Nationwide

[Trancesgirl]

I am administrator for the Wiltshire OPC project.  The original project was the idea of a group of Genealogists from the County of Cornwall who had a concept of providing genealogy material for each county online in one place.  The information was to be gathered by individual volunteers who would adopt a parish of their own and build on that information.  This information can then be used for free by others. 

Several projects nationwide have been started most of which follow the Cornwall concept while others have expanded the idea. 

The Wiltshire project has had problems in past years where the original co-ordinator left the project and the mantle was taken up by a new co-ordinator.  She rebuilt the site and struggled to hold down a full time job and co-ordinate the site.  Enter myself who took over as administrator leaving the co-ordinator to deal with the technical side of things. 

The co-ordinator at the outset was and still is an amateur web-designer and has learnt to cope with the site being hacked and offline whilst rebuilt for a few months.  Since its last regeneration technically things have gone well.

The project now has some 60 volunteers having adopted many parishes between them.  Some have a lot of content others have little since our policy is that we all work in our time and at our own pace. 

We do not profess to being 100% accurate hence we have a clearly sited notice that any information  published has not been verified and that original sources should always be consulted especially if being used for professional research assignments or for educational purposes.  We provide a guide to these items.  Wherever possible we try to check but staffing levels and no funds mean that we cannot always do this.

In recent weeks the Wiltshire project in particular has been "attacked" by a professional individual who appears to have appointed himself as the Wiltshire County Genealogy Police. 

We appreciate criticism good or bad but would wish that to be directed at us via our website rather than on public forums such as this.

We find it difficult to get volunteers to help us as it is without people advertising our project to assist individuals "as useful as oil on water".  And advertising comparisons to our hard worked documents with his own (of which comparison for bmds etc are done with the aid of Family Search which any seasoned researcher should know includes items from the old IGI that were published by family historians themselves and many errors occurred. 

Our project transcripts are sourced from mainly the parish records at the WSHC either from fiche copies or as in our Salisbury Cathedral records from photograph images of the original registers held in the Cathedral itself.

Everyone I know is allowed an opinion.  But is it right to deride in public something which is trying to help others.  Our project now has in the region of 1600 regular registered users.  (You do not need to register to view records but need to register if contacting an OPC).  Since February 2012 the web site has had a total of 119270 hits.  Quite impressive for a site dubbed as "useful as Oil on Water".

If anyone would like more information about setting up an OPC project for their own county or would like to volunteer for the Wiltshire Project please get in touch either through the Wiltshire Web Site or a private message on here

[Berlin-Bob]

As a grateful user of the Dorset OPC I wish to thank you and all OPC'ers for all your valuable time and effort.

There several other OPC contributors, co-ordinators and administrators  who are also members of RootsChat.

We have in the past "flagged up" some other OPC-projects and I summarised some of them here:
Topic: Online Parish Clerks - OPC
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=46825.0

And in case the link gets lost, you can find it here:
RootsChat Reference Library => Lexicon ^{(click here)}

Bob

To all you wonderful on-line parish clerks

I think we should have an on-line parish clerk appreciation day   

Sue

[confused73]

I think that all the opc volunteers deserve a big thank you, and instead of people criticizing they would do better to volunteer to help, maybe then they would not be so free with their criticism.  Well done opc helpers and Thank You.

[sandiep]

As someone who has been greatly helped by OPC volunteers I am disgusted that anyone should slight them..........I have always found these people to be very helpful and the information on the sites very useful.........we should be grateful that there are people willing to give up their time to help others.

[purplekat]

I agree with the above comments, I've found OPC sites very valuable, my thanks to all the volunteers

[Billyblue]

Could someone please explain what OPC stands for and what the volunteers do?
Presumably some form of transcribing?

Thanks
Dawn M

[Jean McGurn]

OPC is Online Parish Clerk.

I, too, would also like to thank the OPC's for their wonderful work. having looked at some original images of parish pages I take my hats off to all who transcribe what in some cases can be a nightmare to get words right.

Jean

[Trancesgirl]

The OPC stands for On-Line Parish Clerk

The idea is for each parish within a county to have an individual or group adopt a parish and then add material to that page such as bmd's, census, newspaper items - in fact anything that is of interest to that particular parish.  The Wiltshire project has a motto - What is of interest or not to yourself will be of interest to someone else.  We extend into local history as well as family history.  You have no need to live within the county many of our OPCs and transcribers live out of the UK.  Most have an interest or link to the county others just feel that that they have gained something from such a project for free in the past and would like to try and give something back.  We are all volunteers and some often purchase books, postcards, microfiche of parish registers from their own purses in order to produce transcripts for others to use for free.  We try to provide a starting point for further research and as with all research we recommend that the original source material is consulted.  There is no set amount of time that volunteers need to spend on the project as we believe that every little helps and we realise that most of us have other lives to live too and we are not a professional organisation.  We are totally unfunded although some sites do accept donations.  Wiltshire OPC accept donations of material only.  If parish adoption is something that a volunteer feels they cannot commit to then transcribing items or preparing items for publication is a big help.  The Wiltshire project has over 500 items awaiting preparation at the present time. Therefore any help we get would be most gratefully received.

[Jill on the A272]

Three cheers for the OPC co-ordinators and contributors!

So far I have not needed to use the Wilts OPC but Lancs and Sussex have been invaluable to me, so much so that I have contributed transcripts of post 1858 wills I have bought and some gravestone photos to the Sussex site in an effort to "put something back", as well as helping out with their project to transcribe the 1841 census.