Cleaning up the data!

For months we have been transcribing information from census returns and street directories into our database. As might be expected for a project handling so much material, every now and again, people make transcription errors.

It seems unlikely that we will notice every error and, in due course, we will rely upon the public to flag-up mistakes, for correction.

Meantime, one of our volunteers has demonstrated a very keen eye for spotting entry errors in the vast sea of persons names, employers names, jobs, places of birth, etc. that constitutes the information in our database.

Amy took a mathematics degree and is a business analyst by profession. Perhaps it's no surprise that she is good at spotting what so many of us miss when we work on the MHMS project. It's certainly a good thing we've attracted her help though, without her eagle eyes a lot of Smith, Brighton and Sussex entries would be sitting in our system as, Smuth, Broghton and Susssex.

Now we just need another couple of volunteers with her skill levels, one to decipher the occasionally illegible hand of the enumerator and the other to identify the transcription errors of the past! Okay, two superhuman volunteers needed!