TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2012-04 > 1334777142


From: Terry Reigel <>
Subject: [TMG] Source Type for 1940 Census
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:25:42 -0400


I've taken some time off from indexing the 1940 census to try to enter
some data from the records I've found, and have run into a couple of
issues I thought I'd mention and see whether others have figured out
solutions.

I create one Source Definition for each household, so obviously the
solution would be different for those who create Sources at another
level, or might not exist at all.

First, I find that there is a family number for each family, but no
dwelling number as in previous censuses. So the "dwelling" Source
Element has to be made conditional. Easy enough.

Of more significance, for the first time, enumerators are supposed to
mark in the Name field the person in the household who supplied the
information, or make a note of who did if it was from someone not a
member of the household. However, I find that they were not religious
about doing that - I've found the marks both in the Name field, and in
the Relation field, and in other cases nothing is marked. It seems to me
that like death certificates, this is useful information to include to
help evaluate the validity of the source. Since the source is cited many
times typically, I'm thinking this information should appear in the full
footnote.

My current thinking is that I want to add an Informant Source Element,
rather than put this in the Comments field, so it's harder to overlook
when creating a Source. My first attempt was to add this element to the
Full Footnote template:

<, informant was [INFORMANT]>

This has the virtue of working with the term "not indicated" for cases
where the enumerator failed to mark who it was, as well as when a name
is entered. But I'm not too happy with just a name. For death
certificates, I include both the name of the informant, and his or her
relationship to the deceased, if I know. Entering just the name for this
census seems less than informative in the notes. I'm thinking maybe
something like these examples might be better:

- the head of household

- the wife of the head of household

- Susan, daughter of the head of household

- Mary Smith, a neighbor

But they seem a bit wordy. Has anyone worked out better solutions?

Next, on to entering the new types of data... <g>

Terry Reigel

This thread: