Human Error

ninatoo · Post by **ninatoo** » Mon May 22, 2006 6:19 am

Hi all,

I just thought I would tell you of a recent experience at SP. I have been searching for the death of Patrick Gordon in Glasgow for ages. I knew he had died between 1891 and 1893, most likely in Glasgow, but try as I might, I could not find a death.

Today I decided to try one last time before finally giving in. I used wildcards PA* G*RD*N for all of Scotland and only four deaths came up in the right period.

Lo and behold...there he was....under PARTICK. Read it again....Partick as in the place not the name Patrick!!!

Looking at the death registration, I see that it clearly says Patrick, correct spelling. So someone has accidentally mis-transcribed his name when adding him to the index.

The scary bit is that among the four possible deaths, there is another Partick. Yes I have informed SP.

It shouldn't have been that hard to find him, and had it been spelled correctly I would have found him quite some time ago.

Just thought I would let you all know. It is the first time I have found such an error at SP!

Nina

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Mon May 22, 2006 10:19 am

Ever had a look for the surname SIMTH in the censuses

David

fbax · Post by **fbax** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:10 pm

Is there any chance that such errors will ever be corrected? Is there a procedure for reporting errors as we find them?

I just registered at SP a few days ago and I've already discovered a couple of errors (all in one family). The database contains the following children of Daniel Anderson & Catherine Skinner in Edinburgh:

1833-08-15 Daniel - 685-1 Vol56
1835-11-19 Robert - 685-1 Vol57
1841-07-02 John - 685-1 Vol58
1846-04-10 Robert - 685-1 Vol59

Images are not available online, so before spending £10 per item, I decided to check the local LDS library this morning. They happened to have microfilm for Vol 56 & 58 in a drawer. I looked at those two films (as did a couple of library staff members) and we could not

find the above records. After 2 hours,

we finally found what we were looking for on 1843-Mar-17 - all three baptisms/christenings on the same day recorded as a single entry with birth dates as above!! The first three items should have been indexed as Vol 58 even though the birth dates do not match the "normal" date range for that volume.

Vol 58 had many entries like the above.

Post by **AndrewP** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:15 pm

fbax wrote:Is there any chance that such errors will ever be corrected? Is there a procedure for reporting errors as we find them?

Hi fbax,

Welcome to TalkingScot.

Yes, there is a reporting method. At the foot of each ScotlandsPeople page there is a "contact us" link. Click on that link and on the following page there is a link "Continue here to fill out the contact us form". Use that to take you to a contact form. That is the error reporting route.

All the best,

AndrewP