User:Caileigholdroyd/Sandbox/South America Coverage Tables

Project Leader
Caileigh Oldroyd

Purpose
Make a table to show record coverage of the Catholic parishes, dioceses, and archdioceses in Latin America.

Task List
Task List

Beginning Instructions
Begin by opening these websites and the task list.


 * 1) GC Catholic
 * 2) The Catholic Directory
 * 3) Wikipedia
 * 4) Google
 * 5) Facebook
 * 6) MapCarta

=Part One=

Step One
1. Choose a municipality to work on. 2. We need to figure out which Archdiocese, Diocese, and Parishes are in the country. Start by looking up the Episcopal Conference of the Country. Use the Wikipedia or GC Catholic link for this. The Wikipedia link will show you the breakdown of the Archdiocese and Diocese in the region. GC Catholic will do the same once you click to the country and click either "Archdiocese" or "Diocese" next to "Jurisdictions"

Step Two
''Note: Many Latin American countries are organized on different municipal levels. They will be something similar to (Greatest to Smallest) Province/State -> District/County -> City/Town -> Neighborhood/Burrow. These will vary from country to country and the names may be different, but structurally are similar. Keep this in mind as you look for parishes and make sure you understand that ecclesiastical boundaries may or may not coincide with those municipal boundaries. 1. Pick an Archdiocese to work on within the country you chose on GC Catholic. If there are multiple archdiocese in the country, choose one to start on.  2. Pick a Diocese to work on within the Archdiocese you chose by clicking "Diocese" next to "Jurisdictions." 3. If the Diocese has a website, look for a page that says "Freguesias" (Portuguese), "Parroquias" (Spanish), or you can use the Google Extension to translate and look for "Parishes." (Make sure to translate back to original language to copy the parish names for the next part. 4. Usually the website will say where the parish is. Once you have this information, put it under the correct jurisdiction on the spreadsheet.  ''Note: Much of the time the parishes will be in the same jurisdiction, but occasionally it might be in a different region. If you have any extras that don't seem to fit, try checking the other regions. 
 * This should take you to a list you can choose from.
 * Click the first one.
 * This should take you to a diocese page.
 * Click the link where it says, "Website"

Step Three
''If there are no websites on GC Catholic, follow the suggestions below to find the parishes within the diocese you are researching. You do not ned to do this if you found a website ran by the diocese:''
 * Start by googling, "DISTRICT, PROVINCE, COUNTRY catholic archdioceses" and fishing through results/removing/adding words to make the search better.
 * If you cannot find anything, you can do a reverse search by searching, "Catholic Church CITY, STATE, COUNTRY" on google maps. Once you find a parish in that area, look up which diocese it belongs to. There may be multiple diocese within a city boundary, but if you find one, it makes it easier to find others.
 * Use the other websites to see if you can find any parishes in the areas. Sometimes Catholic Directory will have some, but is spotty in some localities. If you think you know the Archdiocese, GC Catholic's Archdiocese and Diocese pages are good to click through their maps of the archdiocese/diocese to see any parishes.
 * If the Diocese doesn't have a website, try looking to see if they have made a page on Facebook. You can scope out information there, or even message them to ask questions.
 * MapCarta is good for finding out if a locality mentioned on a Diocese site is a city or neighborhood/burrow.

=Part Two=

Step One
Now we need to check that the parishes are included in the major collections.
 * For most FamilySearch collections you can use the waypoints/browse images to check that there is coverage of the parish within the collection.
 * Ancestry, Findmypast, and MyHeritage will usually have a drop down of included localities or include it in the description.

Costa Rica Collections
1. FamilySearch
 * 1595-1992 at FamilySearch — How to Use this Collection; index and images 
 * For this project, we are only focusing on this Costa Rica, Catholic Church Records collection for now as it is the most expansive collection for Costa Rica on FamilySearch. We may add more later. Don't worry about other Costa Rica collections on FamilySearch for now.

Step Two
The goal of Step Two is to see which parishes and archdiocese the collection truly covers. We will add notes next to the task list of what records are covered in each parish.
 * 1) Click "Browse Images"
 * 2) This will bring you to something called "Waypoints."
 * 3) The waypoints are usually arranged by levels of town, archdiocese, then parish. Sometimes this is different, but it usually always begins with town or city.
 * 4) If it's not obvious where the first locality listed should go to match the task list, click in to the images and read the first line. It should say something along the lines of "En la Sierra de Abangares, Parroquia de Canas". This tells you that the Locality is "Abangares", and that the Parish is "Canas". 
 * 5) Look through the spreadsheet and decide where this part of the set covers.
 * 6) In the "FamilySearch Images" column, paste the last way point you ended up in. It should look something like this, "Bautismos y Matrimonios 1918."
 * 7) If you cannot find a locality that it specifically matches to, but you know it is in a specific region, you can create it's own area on it's own on that region's tab. Just make a note next to it that you have done this.
 * When going through some of these, it appears that some of the bishops/priests did not give specific information on what the parish was called, but rather just said "here in Guanacaste." There may be some history behind this, but do not worry about digging too deep for it, just add it to the tab it makes most sense to put it under and we can decide how it should appear later.

8. Once you have gone through all the way points on one locality, move on to the next one and start again. 9. If you ever are unsure where a portion of this collection fits, just put it where it makes the most sense and make a note that this one is undecided.