This page provides information about issues associated with transcribing for FreeBMD
and is therefore of interest to people who:
transcribe index pages,
manage syndicates (syndicate coordinators)
are involved in management of transcribing (e.g. corrections) and
help with the development of FreeBMD.
Unable to find the information you require? Try using our website search engine by clicking on the Explore logo:
Reporting Problems
If you experience errors while uploading data (or other website related problems),
please report them to us at
,
saying what you were doing (i.e. submitting, searching), the URL and the
exact time (and timezone) that this happened (including the text of any
error messages). Thank you.
Please note that this address must not be used to report errors in the data held by FreeBMD.
If you have a correction to an entry click click on the
button next to the entry and follow the instructions for submitting a correction.
If you have problems relating to your user id or syndicate (e.g. cannot contact syndicate
coordinator) please contact the Volunteer Coordinator.
Submission Format. A definition of the formats for submitting entries using the transcription software or other means.
Transcribers' Knowledge Base Gives answers to many questions
about transcribing and transcription software.
If you are having problems, or need to ask a question about
the transcriptions you are doing, check the Transcribers' Knowlege Base (TKB) first. Your question may already have been answered.
Comments. Details about how to add comments to transcriptions.
WinBMD Help. See the help file for WinBMD for details of using WinBMD, either from the Help menu in WinBMD or from the Program menu
Due to a lot of confusion over the transcribing of full stops (periods), all transcribers are asked to read this Policy Statement on the matter.
For the definitive guide on transcribing full stops, please see
here.
Communications
Mailing Lists. If you would like to become involved in the project, please
join one of our mailing lists.
Suspect Files A list of files uploaded by Syndicate Members that
have some anomoly that needs to be checked (e.g. files with an unexpectedly small number of entries
because only one column of a multi-column page has been transcribed). This now includes aliases in
the Associate Name (previously in a separate list)
In addition to Transcribers and Co-ordinators, FreeBMD uses the services of a small number of people in a number
of teams who help to ensure that the accuracy of our data is improved. Some of these roles remain to be filled (an
announcement will be made when we are looking for people)
District Alias Team - Co-ordinator Martin Cope
Query Investigation Team - Coordinator TBA
Data Checking Teams - Coordinator TBA
Resolution Teams - Coordinator TBA
Central Resolution Team - Coordinator TBA
Developer Resources
The FreeBMD Website is maintained by a small team of developers who help provide the facilities
used by our large team of transcribers ... additional transcribers are always welcome! The pages
in this section describe the development environment that we use, the processes involved, and
include some files which are a useful reference for developers.
Design Guide showing the standard format of FreeBMD Web pages.
HTML Preprocessor giving information
about the use of the HTML preprocessor used for all FreeBMD static web
pages.
Schedule of updates of FreeBMD database - The database is updated monthly usually on the 23rd of each month. The update usually takes one to two days
The tools we use in the development process are CVS, a version control system, and Trac, a problem tracking system. Below is a list of helpfiles and tutorials for the various tools and methods of development used on FreeBMD
trac Managing changes for FreeBMD (instructions for the use of trac are on the home page of trac)
The following are list of references or tools that may be useful in diagnosing problems with the system
System Processes A guide to various processes provided for managing the system
Quality Assurance Processes A guide to how to use various system tools (described below) to identify, analyse and correct quality issues in the FreeBMD data
Show Records Facility to show records in the database from filename, chunk, accession, etc.
Show Accession Facility to show entries in the database from a particular accession.
Find file Facility to find a file, or files, from the filename (i.e. without knowing the userid).
Aliasing Tools Facilities for the Data Aliasing Team to help process district names and synonyms
Search for district synonyms Facility to search for the synonyms of a district (run offline and used with Aliasing Tools).
List deployed files Facility to display the name and revision number of every file deployed on the system
Make mail address Facility to create spam-proof mail addresses (as images) for incorporation into static and dynamic pages
Find page entries Facility to list all the pages for a particular quarter - this is linked to from the help pages for finding a missing spouse but could also be useful in diagnostic situations
Show update progress Facility to show the curent progress of the latest database update
Show synchronisation Facility to show the state of files currently being synchronised from master to slaves
Show state of handoff Facility to show the current states of a handoff of new files to the cluster
Show WinBMD statistics Facility to display the usage of different versions of the upload interface and the software (mainly WinBMD) used (has to search the logs so can be slow)
Show MacBMD statistics Facility to display the usage of different versions of the upload interface and the software (mainly MacBMD) used (has to search the logs so can be slow)
Show FreeComETT statistics Facility to display the usage of different versions of the upload interface and the software (mainly FreeComETT) used (has to search the logs so can be slow)
Show data file version Facility to display identifier of a data file (mainly used for the WinBMD districts file)
Show databases Facility to display the dates of all databases
Unaligned ONENAME report Listing, for all those quarters shown as nearly complete, of ONENAME transcriptions that have not been aligned
Unresolved links A listing of system entries using #THEORY,LINK that do not matched any entry in the database
Unresolved late entry references Unresolve references to late entries, that is references of the form see M/78M where the corresponding entry could not be found
Dropped Records A listing of those records that have been dropped from the database, mostly RANDOM records in completed quarters that have not been aligned
Inserted Records A listing of records, mainly RANDOM records, that have not been aligned to other records but have been inserted into search results
Misalignments A listing, by quarter, of records that have not been aligned but probably refer to the same entry (requires login)
Failed alignments A listing of alignments using #THEORY,ALIGN or MakeAlignments.pl that do not match any records
Manage Scans Utility to manage links to scans (requires login)
Syndicate Report Utility to produce a report on the details of syndicates (requires login, if coordinator (as opposed to admin) only shows syndicates of which the user is a coordinator)
Transcribers' Page
,
saying what you were doing (i.e. submitting, searching), the URL and the
exact time (and timezone) that this happened (including the text of any
error messages). Thank you.
button next to the entry and follow the instructions for submitting a correction.
