Transcribing Headstone Photographs
Overview
- Headstone photographs have to be transcribed to make the information searchable.
- We transcribe all factual information but do not record blessings, poetry etc.
- It's always best if you transcribe your own photos. If you cannot do that, we may be able to accept a limited number of photos without transcriptions.
- Before starting transcribing check the website to see if any transcripts already exist. If so, you only need to upload each photo to the appropriate inscription.
Transcription Spreadsheet
- The headstone details should be recorded in this spreadsheet which is then submitted along with the photographs. As stated above if we already have transcripts online you must ask us for a copy of the data that includes the person-ids rather than starting from scratch.
- The spreadsheet contains three sheets, one for the inscriptions, one to describe the cemetery and one with detailed help instructions.
- If a field is not present on the headstone, leave it blank. Eg. Do not enter "No Date" if a headstone has no date.
- If a field is illegible leave it blank. Do not enter ? or ??
- If a field is partly legible, enter as much as you can followed by ?
- Do not enter [sic] or similar after a name. Put a comment in the Other Information field if necessary.
- Nicknames go at the end of all first names in brackets, without inverted commas. Eg. William John (Bill). NOT William John ("Bill") or William (Bill) John or William John "Bill"
- Do not use accented characters. Use the closest letter.
- You may use any appropriate abbreviation.
- Please read the Help sheet for full instructions.
Excel Dates
Excel's date handling is of no use for genealogical purposes:
- It cannot handle dates prior to 1900.
- It converts anything that looks even vaguely like a date into a date.
- It changes the format of a cell from Text do Date without asking.
- Its date format is the number of days since 1/1/1900, which can end up looking like a big number (eg. 12653) when stored on our database
- The birth and death date columns in the template are formatted as text columns. Keep them in that format.
- Enter all dates as eg. 27 Jan 1917. They will remain as text.
- If you copy and paste a date into one of those cells, Excel may convert the field to a Date.
- To successfully copy and paste a date as text, make sure the cell is formatted as text, then right click the cell and select Paste Special, Text.
What's Next
See the Volunteer page for instructions of about how to submit photos and transcriptions to this site.