Sunday, April 06, 2008

The future of the COCP



Mrs McCormick enjoying her Christmas break in Germany


Hello folks

Nothing to do with census returns!

I have just polished off another two pieces, so we now have:

Two 1871 pieces with transcribers and five with checkers. Plus 19 pieces of the 1881 with checkers. Could be less than 3 months work!

My thoughts have been turning to what I might do next. And what you might do next as well.

Many of you have been with me for several years now, one or two since the beginning of the project nearly 8 years ago. I would quite like to keep our team in being.

It has been suggested that we should take on the Cornish 1901. One chap even suggested the 1911! But I have had enough of census returns. And in any case, it will take a year or two to get the ones we have done sorted out properly. If any of you fancy running a COCP 1901 project, let me know; I will be happy to offer advice. And I am happy to try and persuade you all to help out.

I have decided that I shall return to my starting point, researching the very small Cornish village I live in plus reviving my own family history. For the Mitchell project I want to transcribe the parish registers. I shall give them, when I have done them, to the COCP sister project - C-PROP.

I wonder if any of you would care to stick with me and switch to C-PROP? The parish registers are not checked or validated, just transcribed. It is the same deal - LDS discs are provided plus the required spreadsheets. You might be able to get a parish that you are particularly interested in. You might not. C-PROP also requires data-inputters; at the moment for the Phillimore indexes, but I am sure there will be more of that. The parish registers are, I think, more interesting than the census returns and those before 1700 are harder to transcribe.

If you don't fancy this; then I am still in need of census checkers for the Nth Wiltshire project. This project is about to finish the final few parishes of the Wiltshire 1841 and then there are just a few 1861 & 71 pieces to check. Then I am out of that as well.

Of course, you might have ideas of your own and you can, therefore, just wave me goodbye and get on with it. You might have suggestions to make.

Anyway, in spite of my optimism, we still have some work to do. Plenty of time to decide on what to do next. But I thought I would let you know how I was thinking.

Rgds

Michael

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