Monday Musings – Keying Standards


What are the Keying Standards?  Why aren’t there more standards?  Do the Keying Standards supersede the project instructions?

We have the keying standards so when you have a question that the project instructions do not answer you can go to the standards and hopefully have your questions answered.  They also help with standard entries for the same field across many projects.  Based on how data is normalized there are standards that help ensure the data is being keyed correctly – this is why you will notice instructions on how to key names, dates, locations, gender, ages, etc will be similar, if not the same, across projects.

Standards are added and updated as needed.  Based on feedback or changes made at Ancestry we may choose to add or take away standards.

And no, the standards do not supersede the project specific instructions.  Read the field helps first, review the sample images and then go to the keying standards.  If you don’t find the answer there you can post a message on the Discussion page or message boards or send us a message.

In short the Keying Standards are a good resource and are helpful in understanding how many of the fields should be keyed.

Thank you for all you contribute and … Happy indexing!

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June 22nd, 2015
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Jeanne
Posted on:
June 23, 2015 at 10:36 am

Tuesday Thoughts
What are the reasons to vary from the keying standards?
Knowing why the year is sometimes 2 digits and sometimes 4 digits might help a keyer to understand the variation.
Same thing for state names, sometimes keyed in full, other times key as seen.
I always keep the field helps open and check that frequently because of these variations.
Love keying!

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
afechter
Posted on:
June 23, 2015 at 10:45 am

Jeanne,
In answer to your Tuesday Thoughts…

What are the reasons to vary from the keying standards?
– If the project instructions state to key it differently.

Knowing why the year is sometimes 2 digits and sometimes 4 digits might help a keyer to understand the variation.
– This is project specific and is generally related to the metadata we already have. So if we know all of the records are for the 1800s we may ask that the year be entered as 4 digits; adding 18 in front of any 2 digit years. The difference this makes is that it saves a step on the back-end processing where we would have added the century in.

Same thing for state names, sometimes keyed in full, other times key as seen.
– We generally will have the state keyed as seen. There is one project I am aware of, US Southern Claims, that states to key the state in full – due to its age I cannot recall why. Any newer project will have you key as seen.

We just had a meeting on standards and solidifying how data should be keyed. With a few exceptions most data is keyed as seen.
Great questions. 🙂