Getting Started

Assigning a Transcription

Stay in Contact

Transcription Teams

Resignations or Removals

As a State Coordinator you become a voting member of the Census Project and are required to sign the Appointed Volunteer Agreement according to the Census Project Bylaws. Please email your signed agreement to the Project Coordinators.

The Census Project Bylaws and information about the Project's Non-Profit Incorporation are posted online at:  http://www.us-census.org/cphome/

When you have been appointed as a CP-State Coordinator you will be subscribed to the Cens_Asst mailing list. This list is informal and communication is about matters concerning the Census Project, such as: questions, sharing assignment coordination ideas, meeting announcements, upload notifications, virus alerts, notifications of new census images online, and etc. Only CP-State Coordinators are subscribed to this mail-list.

You are invited to join us at the occasional State Coordinator meetings via mIRC. These meetings can be either formal project meetings of the voting membership or just friendly get-togethers to chat and share ideas. All meeting dates are announced on the Cens_Asst mail-list. Contact April Phillips if you don't have mIRC installed on your computer.

Getting Started Please consider changing your email signature to reflect your new position with the project. Example: Your Name (email address) Ohio State Coordinator The USGenWeb Census Project® http://www.us-census.org/ You might also want to add these url's to your email signature: Transcribers' Information: http://www.us-census.org/info/ Transcribers' Help: http://www.us-census.org/help/

The coordinator's name and email address on each of your state's web pages will need to be changed. Our Transcription Assignment Webmaster will do this as well as any future button updates for your state's assignment status index web-pages.

Each state has an assignment database and hopefully your predecessor has provided you with the current database. If you haven't already received an assignment database, contact Connie Burkett.

The first thing you should do is compare the assignment database against your state's web pages. If there are any assignment or button discrepancies, ask your predecessor or Connie Burkett, for assistance. When you add, delete, or change an assignment in your state database, please use the Assignment Form to notify the Project Coordinators.

When you are checking the web pages, it would be a good idea to take time to make sure all the link buttons are active, correct, and the proper link-button has been used. A web-page with a list of the Status Buttons (and what they mean) is at: http://www.us-census.org/states/graphics/status.htm and this same web-page is linked at the bottom of each of the assignment status web-pages.

You will need to contact each transcriber in your assignment database to Introduce Yourself as their new coordinator and offer your help to the transcriber. This will allow you to check the validity of the email addresses and to get a report of their transcribing progress. You might want to mention the Census-L email list provided by the project for transcribers and suggest that they be subscribed to this email list if they aren't already subscribed. The Census-L mailing list is a moderated list which means that the transcriber cannot subscribe himself to the list. Send subscription requests to Ron Eason. Information about this mail list and other Project Mail Lists is provided online at: http://www.us-census.org/info/lists.htm

Some of the transcribers that you try to contact might have bad email addresses and your message will bounce back to you. If its an old assignment and you cannot find a valid email address for a transcriber, you might need to Remove the Assignment.

Transcription Assignments After you assume your new state coordinator position the Volunteer Transcriber Sign-up Form will be edited to include your email address. You will only receive the volunteer emails for the state(s) that you are coordinating. Here is an example of what a signup email will look like: Subject: Signup Notice Name: John Doe Email: JDoe@provider.com OS: Windows "98 System type: PC Previous project transcription: Yes Access to microfilm/images: No Spreadsheet 1: Excel 2000 Spreadsheet 2: Spreadsheet 3: State(s): Georgia Counties/Comments: Webster County Year(s): 1920

Please reply to your signup volunteers within two or three days. If you know you are going to be away from your computer or unable to answer your email for more than several days, please contact April Phillips (State Coordinator Liaison) and/or Connie Burkett, to make arrangements for someone to cover your state(s) during your absence so that your Signup Notice email does not sit waiting for a reply.

Your first reply to a new volunteer is very important. The project has developed "Welcome Letters" that we would like you to use. You will need to review these letters and modify them according to the year requested by each signup volunteer and other pertinent information.

Depending on the year assigned and the volunteer's spreadsheet software, you will email the transcriber with the URLs for downloading CART and/or the spreadsheet template-files. http://www.us-census.org/cart/ http://www.us-census.org/info/templates2.htm

Using the Assignment Submission Form You will use the Assignment Submission Form for assigning transcriptions, correcting assignments, removing assignments, reporting assignment resignations, updating email-addresses for transcribers, and creating new Transcription Teams. Please read the assignment form closely and be certain that you have filled in all the pertinent information correctly. When you click the "submit" button, the form will automatically email the information to Connie Burkett, Ron Eason, and the transcription assignment webmaster . Each of these people have their own duties concerning new volunteers. If you have filled in your own email address at the bottom of the assignment form, you will receive an email copy of the assignment, too. The Assignment Form url and password will be emailed to you after you have signed and submitted your Appointed Volunteer Agreement. Email your questions or comments about using the assignment form to Connie Burkett.

Stay in Contact with Your Transcribers You should occasionally check in with your transcribers to see how they are progressing. We suggest doing this every two or three months. Although there is no time limitation to transcribe a census and we don't want a transcriber to feel he/she is being pressured, we also don't want an inactive assignment to remain on the web pages.

Encourage your new transcribers to find a proofreader as soon as they have completed the first township or enumeration district and remind them that as they complete each district, they can send it to their proofreader. As each Enumeration District is proofread and updated it can be submitted so it can be placed online while the rest of the transcription is still in progress.

To find a proofreader, refer your transcribers to the Proofreaders' Exchange online at: http://www.us-census.org/proof/.

If a transcriber's email address changes, please pass that information on to the Project Coordinators.

Transcription Teams

SETTING UP A TRANSCRIPTION TEAM Some volunteers use the signup form to request their assignment as a Team Leader, but if you are initiating a new team, it is up to you who will be assigned as the Team Leader. You may do it yourself or the leadership could be managed by someone else. Please notify the Project Coordinators of each new "Transcription Team" by identifying the Team Leader, his/her email, and state, county, year assigned.

The Team Leader should have access to a copy of the actual census data to be transcribed to determined how to break down the enumeration into individual Team Member assignments. As a rule of thumb, a good breakdown point is by Enumeration District on the 1880 and up census years, and by Township, or Borough on the 1870 and lower census years. Please email a copy of the county breakdown list to Connie Burkett, File Manager Liaison. It is helpful for the file managers to have the list to keep track of when the entire county transcription changes from partial uploads to completed.

We recommend that the Team Leader contact the appropriate USGenWeb County Coordinator to let them know that a Census Transcription Team is being developed for their county. If you are initiating the team and no one is assigned as the Team Leader, maybe they would be interested in assuming the assignment. Send the USGenWeb County Coordinator the URL of the Team web page so they can link to it (if they would like to) and ask for their support. Ask for permission to send requests for census transcription volunteers and notices of transcriptions going online to their applicable county mail lists. The USGenWeb County URL is linked from the top of each county's assignment status web-page.

To see examples of USGenWeb County Coordinator support, refer to: Cambria County, PA  (look for "CENSUS VOLUNTEERS" in the "What's New" section) Somerset County, PA  (scroll down the page to "Census" in the "Resource and Reference Directory" section.) The Census page has several links to our Census Project's pages.

ESTABLISH GOOD COMMUNICATION Good communication is vital for Transcription Team management. The Team Leader must keep the CP-State Coordinator (if not the same person) informed of all changes within the team and the CP-State Coordinator must inform the Project Coordinators. If the Transcription Team has the support of the USGenWeb County Coordinator, you will be responsible for keeping them informed too.

Teams could have many members and you will be expected to know what each member is transcribing or proofreading. Ask the Team Members to contact the Team Leader about once a month or so with a status report. Nothing elaborate just an idea of how they are progressing with an estimate, (example 1/4 way through, 1/2 way through, 3/4 way through, ready for proofreading, at proofreader, making final corrections, ready to submit).

By keeping in touch with the team-members you will have an idea of how many transcriptions might hit the file managers at once. Under non-team procedures the file managers get the partial transcriptions for a county over an extended time, but with a team they may finish processing one Team Member's submission one day and get another Team Member's file the next, and another the next day. It is very helpful to give Connie Burkett, the File Manager Liaison, notice of when two or more transcriptions are close to being ready for submission. This will save the File Managers a lot of time by eliminating unnecessary duplicated work in creating the name index for a transcription which is updated with each partial upload.

TEAM MEMBER ASSIGNMENTS The Team Leader should notify the appropriate CP-State Coordinator (if not the same person) each time a new volunteer joins their Transcription Team. The State Coordinator will email the assignment to the Project Coordinators. Information to be reported to the Project Coordinators is the Team Member's name and email address, the name of the Transcription Team and the Team Leader's name. It is not neccessary to identify what each Team Member will be transcribing or proofreading to the Project Coordinators. Team Members may be subscribed to the Census mail list.

YOUR STATE ASSIGNMENT DATABASE You will need to include each individual assignment for a particular team. Some State Coordinators have found it works better to keep separate Team assignment databases within one Excel workbook. Some teams, especially for 1880 and above, can have more than 50 different assignments. These large teams are better managed by using a separate worksheet for each Team in the workbook. For large teams a Team-table web-page will be created when the Team assignment is submitted. The Team-table web-page will be linked from the County assignment-status web-page. As a short-cut for creating a team-table in your assignment data-base, you can go to the Team-table web-page online and export to an Excel file to get a duplicate Team-table for your data-base and then you can add email-addresses and other pertinent team information to your assignment database.

TRANSCRIPTION TEAM WEB PAGE The team web page will be created and maintained by the Transcription Assignment Webmaster. Team tables will be located in a subdirectory named 'teams' under your state web page directory and they will be linked from the appropriate counties on your state assignment web-page.

Team Web Page Example:   1920 LaSalle County IL

IS TEAM WORK WORTH THE EFFORT? YES and NO It is worth the effort in that the census usually gets online much quicker than if one volunteer is doing the entire County. No.. it isn't worth it if you aren't prepared to handle the extra work it involves. If you handle more than one team at a time, be prepared to stay busy and if at all possible, you should solicit help by getting an Assistant State Coordinator or Team Leader(s) to handle the individual teams for you.

April Phillips Suggestions on How To Find Transcription Volunteers:  Local historical/genealogy society  Solicit applicable County email list  I am on the lookup page for some of the Counties and when I get a lookup request, when I respond I add a small sales pitch about how if we had more volunteers come forward the census would be online quicker.  Web pages - mine, County pages where I get the support, CP's States Status of volunteers page.  mIRC. I go into several active genealogy channels. Participate in the conversation but always stay alert to ways I can get in a sales pitch without coming across pushy. I would be interested in other ways too, so please feel free to share your ideas.

Assignment Resignations or Removals ASSIGNMENT RESIGNATIONS When a transcriber resigns, you will need to determine the status of the transcription: (1) is it partially transcribed, (2) completed, or (3) not started. Even if he/she only completed a township, we can place it online. If the transcription is not proofread, the File Managers can review it to make sure it isn't too full of errors, and it can be placed online unproofread.

If the resigning transcriber was using a donated SK publication, the booklet should be returned to the project so it can be forwarded to the next volunteer for that census. Please contact Connie Burkett to request her mailing address so the SK donated publication can be mailed to her.

ASSIGNMENT REMOVAL If you have tried to contact a transcriber and the email bounces, be sure to ask Connie Burkett if she has a second email address noted in the Master Database. Sometimes a transcriber will notify one State Coordinator of their new email address, but forget to notify the other. Only after you have exhausted all means of trying to contact the transcriber should you remove the assignment, especially if they were using an SK donated resource.

If you assign the same census to another volunteer, then hear from the transcriber you previously removed from the assignment, explain to the removed volunteer that you couldn't find him/her because you didn't have have a current email address, therefore the assignment was removed. You can also suggest that the assignment could become a "team effort".