Jesse & Duane, I have put into a database (index) the contents of the burial books for Mt. St. Joseph Cemetery in Hayward and for the death records from the former UPPEC lodge. My first comment is that there may be a better program than the Excel program. Excel is for doing computations and that may not be a good idea for people that do not understand they can really mix up information that they do not intend to mix. The Microsoft program for databases is Access. It is not hard to use and lets you put information into the form you choose. There are columns, you decide how many and what information goes into each column. You can then search by any column and it does not mix up the other columns. I am not sure I am explaining it in a way that makes sense to everyone. An example is what I used for the death index: Seperate columns for last name, middle name, first name, place of death, date of death, date of burial, age at time of death, father's name, place of birth, mother's name, place of birth, mortuary, cause of death, contact's name. I also put in a column I call abreviation. In that column, I took out all the vowels from the last name (unless the name began with a vowel) and did not repeat any consanant. Using this column, I can look at all the Pr surnames, no matter how the name is spelled. (Perreira, Pereira, Perriera, Periera, or even Perry). I have found this column saves a lot of time when surnames can be spelled so many different ways. If anyone wants more information about this type of database, please email me and I am happy to communiate with you regarding a database that is easy to use and can help a lot of people. Celeste, Hayward, CA
Celeste Perry [email protected] --- On Tue, 3/13/12, Duane <[email protected]> wrote: From: Duane <[email protected]> Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Re: Creating An Index for the Records To: [email protected] Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 11:16 AM I suspect that almost all of us index, as that is really the only way to add siblings, etc. to our family trees, and if you go back far enough, everyone is related to everyone anyway. You are right Jesse, it is a huge waste of time for all of us to do it, as opposed to sharing. In the era where people outright steal music and movies with no repercussions, it seems unfair not to be able to share simple finding aids. Would it be an legal violation to simply post what freguesia and time periods we have all indexed? On Tuesday, March 13, 2012 10:55:12 AM UTC-7, Jesse wrote: Hi everyone, When going through the records, I can't help but think (as I'm sure everyone else must) that it would be great if there was an index available. I've also thought, at times, that creating one might not be so difficult, as it would be relatively painless as I pass the records that aren't mine for me to simply record the name, parents, and page number. I was wondering if anyone had ever attempted a project like this, and if there are big, maybe obvious roadblocks that I'm overlooking. While to index every record from every book from every island would be almost an impossibility for a single person, I was thinking that if we came up with a standardized format and were able to use a program such as Microsoft Excel, it might be very easy to make participating in a project like this accessible to many people. If when browsing through a book, one can simply enter the three to six names on the page into a form with a specific field already prepared for that very page, I think that creating a series of indices may be not so hard. Combined with the fact that the books already imply a very tight date and location range, I believe a lot of information can be centralized without a TON of effort. This was just an idea I had floating around in my head, and I'm sure it's been discussed before, but I figured I would mention in just in case. I created an example spreadsheet which I'm attaching. I think the policy when making them would be that if there are any doubts at ALL about a piece of information, to just leave the field blank or put a "*" to indicate the information exists, but could not be read. Thanks for reading this. I would love to hear people's thoughts. -- Jesse Pacheco [email protected] -- To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive. For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." -- To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive. For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership."
