Talk:FamilySearch Indexing: New Zealand–Passenger Lists, 1871-1915, Project Updates

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Many commonly asked questions, such as indexing crossed out information, have already been answered in the Basic indexing instructions.

Occupations
Many thanks for the clarification re abbreviations in the Occupation field - it's now clear what is wanted, and will help to achieve consistency in indexing and arbitration.

I'm unhappy, though, re the issue of a single entry for all passengers spanning the whole occupation column.

The rule "If more than one occupation is listed, index only the first one" applies without any problem where more than one occupation is listed for an individual passenger. For example, if the form lists a passenger's occupation as "Dressmaker and Milliner", both of these occupations are true for that passenger, so indexing that passenger as a dressmaker is still indexing accurate information about that passenger, even if it leaves out some information.

However, if you have a ship full of chimney sweeps and vicars, and the person who filled out the passenger list simply wrote one entry, vertically, across the whole Occupation column, summarising that shipload of passengers as "Chimney Sweeps and Vicars", indexing them all as chimney sweeps results in the wrong information being indexed for some passengers, since each passenger is EITHER a chimney sweep OR a vicar. It's not the same as saying that each of the passengers is both a chimney sweep AND a vicar.

I do understand the need to simplify, as much as possible, the work of transcribing and indexing these documents, and that it's not our job to correct what was written on the original documents if the original data is wrong in some way. But surely we shouldn't be allowing the need for simplicity to result in us knowingly and deliberately distorting the original information and indexing wrong data which doesn't actually reflect what was originally recorded? - Dms246 21:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)