[1a]

FreeCEN

aims to provide free-on-line transcriptions
from the UK Census records,
allowing computer searches across County borders
and between census years.

FreeCEN is completely unfunded and non-commercial.

Grateful acknowledgements
to the many hundreds of volunteers around the world whose efforts make this ambitious undertaking possible,
to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints and to Archive CD Books who loan the various fiche, film and CD images of the Records Office papers for transcription.
Index

SCOPE:

  • The Project aims to cover all census years for England, Wales and Scotland.
  • Volunteer teams are organised to deal with a specific "Census County".
  • Inital work is being undertaken for 1891 for many counties of England & Wales, and for 1841 for Scotland.
    Cornwall 1891 is well advanced and significant progress has also been made with CON1841, whilst work has started with Herefordshire 1861 to avoid duplicating the County FHS current plans.

    The METHOD

    FreeCEN involves several stages in the preparation of data for the on-line Database.

    (1) Transcription [4a] from census images to computer file, faithfully reproducing the Enumerator's original records, including their errors.

    (2) Checking [5a], by a second operator, of the transcribed file against the census image with resolution of interpretation queries whereever possible.

    (3) Validation [6a] by another volunteer who is familiar with the area concerned. This aims for final resolution of any outstanding queries. Any queries remaining after Validation will be flagged as "doubtful data" on the online database.

    (4) Post-Validation [6c] is primarily a tidying of the data file before upload to the Internet Database, mainly by rationalising the format and content of brief Notes made by the transcriber which may be relevant to certain records.

    Utility routines [9a] may be applied after any of the above stages in order to ensure structural compliance of the files, to reassure new volunteers about their accuracy, or even to salvage damaged files.