VOLUNTEERING AT HOME

GET INVOLVED!

Introduction

Volunteering can be a great way to contribute to the Society from the comfort of your own home. We are always looking for volunteers to help with our projects, mainly transcriptions from photographed records and images.

Data from the Parish Registers will be added to Findmypast, for which the Society receives royalties. This is a useful income stream and allows us to keep our subscriptions low.

Other data is now being added to the Members’ Area of the website – this gives our members greater benefits.

Family historians now expect more of the information essential to our research to be available online. However, data can only be made available if we have volunteers to help transcribe the records.

All of the work done by our volunteers is appreciated and valued. If you feel that you are able to offer some help with any of the above, then please email us at info@northants–fhs.org with details of which project you are interested in helping with.

 

This video explains all aspects of volunteering for the Society.
Scroll down for shorter videos about each kind of project.

 

How it works

Volunteers transcribe data into an Excel spreadsheet. A template for a particular project will be supplied along with a guidance sheet. This will detail the information required in each column and any particular formatting needs.

Parish Register Transcriptions
We have completely transcribed a large proportion of the parish registers but there is still work to be done. Volunteers are needed to complete the outstanding parishes.

  • You will be sent paper copies of a register (or part of) – this will need to be transcribed and the entries added to a pre-set spreadsheet.
  • For some registers, experience of reading old handwriting would be advantage.
  • Other volunteers are needed to check query entries on the transcriptions against the original registers (images available on Ancestry)
  • On returning the transcription to the co-coordinator, this will then be checked by a second volunteer.

Memorial Inscription digitisation
We have published over 210 booklets of memorials from around the county. With postage costs now high, we feel it would be more useful to researchers to additionally make these available online on FMP.

Volunteers will be provided with a spreadsheet which will include the inscriptions from a parish. Certain information needs to be extracted from the inscriptions and entered into pre-set columns (e.g. date of birth, date of death/burial and age). As always, guidance on the format will be supplied.

Other Transcriptions
We have taken images of a number of name-rich resources at the Archives, such as militia lists, land tax, poll books, civil war monies and other lists. These now need transcribing into a pre-set template in an Excel spreadsheet. Guidance for each will be given.