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Archiver > AUS-QLD > 2005-05 > 1115009378
From: "Kerry Raymond" <>
Subject: Re: [AUS-QLD] Re: [Gen-QLD] more cemeteries and other memorial photos
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 14:49:38 +1000
References: <002f01c54d69$665ad1e0$3c13a8c0@cabernet> <00d501c54df4$391ba840$8100a8c0@EdnaSabato>
> Strangest Alphabetical Lists I ever saw, but, I guess everyone is entitled
> to an opinion.
What Edna was concerned about was entries that appeared to be indexed by
given name instead of surname, which (if true) would indeed have been a very
strange way to do it. So, let me explain ...
Each entry is indexed multiple times using all the names found on the
headstone. So, the surnames and given names are all there in alphabetical
order (plus other random words, because it is machine indexed from the photo
captions). If you take a look at the smallest of our cemeteries, Bunya which
has 1 readable headstone for Thomas Broad:
http://www.chapelhill.homeip.net/FamilyHistory/Photos/Bunya-cemetery-Pine-Rivers-Shire/NameIndex.html
you will see that the entry for his headstone appears twice in the list,
once indexed by Broad and one by Thomas.
We choose to construct the index in this way for a few reasons:
* machines are good at indexing but aren't good at telling the difference
between a surname and a given name, so it was simply easier to do it that
way
* sometimes people want to look up using given names, particularly for women
whose married names are not always known
* some headstones don't give a surname (or at least not one we could still
see) so a given name is all we have
So, having all names indexed gives greater flexibility in finding someone,
but has the downside of increasing the size of the WWW page.
Thank you for Edna for explaining the issue; we'll add some words to the WWW
site to make it clearer how the index works.
Kerry & David.
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