I have been discussing the absence of a rescan policy with Allan Raymond and he has suggested I raise the matter on the Admins list. He told me a fortnight ago that he would take up the matter of a rescan policy with the Team. More recently he advised that he is sill waiting a response from other team members. And added; One of the main players Dave Mayall has been absent for about a fortnight and I understand from a message I received a couple of days ago he will be off for another couple of weeks. I am a whole hearted supporter of Bob Phillips and his team in their endeavours to re-photograph the poorer quality images as long as they confine their efforts to transcriber requested rescans. Unfortunately they are not doing this and Bob has told me they are ignoring transcriber rescan requests. From the evidence of their efforts on behalf of my syndicate, the criteria they have adopted for selection means they have only picked up a handful of transcriber requested rescans I am convinced that the uploading of non-transcriber rescans requests must stop immediately. If this is not done we are piling up confusion and mayhem when the time comes for the second keying. The uploading of non-requested rescans places coordinators in a difficult position. In effect they are forced to get these unasked-for scans redone. If they are not redone the likelihood is that the second keying will be done using an enhanced image with the probability of an increased numbers of mismatched against the first keying. Second keying should only be done using the same source material. I have monitored and had a contingency plan for getting the approximately 3000 transcriber rescans generated by my syndicate members done when the new material was available. By extrapolating the numbers of non-transciber rescans that have been done within one quarter to all the work done by my syndicate, I find that the program that is underway will generate between 8000 and 10000 pages to be transcribed. The work in getting transcriber requested rescans re-done or amended is considerable, but the addition of unasked for rescans creates an unwelcome and unwanted addition. The handling of rescans is more time consuming than allocating and monitoring transcriber progress. The rescanned material is scattered randomly through a series of scans and whilst it is possible to isolate the new material it is also spread amongst (in my case) 40 or 50 transcribers at least. Each needs an e-mail for each batch of rescans to be done.

John To clarify a couple of your points. 1. I requested you raise this issue via the Syndicate List, as your expressed concern that Co-ordinators should have an input into any rescanning processes. I for one would like to have defined rescanning process for all to see, which was the basis of our off list discussions. 2. You are in the realms of discussing Policy which is what the DISCUSS list is for. I would recommend that continuance of the discussion is via the Syndicates list or the DISCUSS list. 3. Second Keying will be done using the best source available at that time. We have previously reported our intention to replace poor quality scans please see our News Page at: http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/news.html . 4. You can't possibly be suggesting that where we have supplied pristine new scans that double keying is undertaken using the previous poor quality scans? Regards Allan Raymond ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Slann" <john.slann@btinternet.com> To: <FreeBMD-Admins-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: 24 October 2005 14:16 Subject: Rescanning policy I have been discussing the absence of a rescan policy with Allan Raymond and he has suggested I raise the matter on the Admins list. He told me a fortnight ago that he would take up the matter of a rescan policy with the Team. More recently he advised that he is sill waiting a response from other team members. And added; One of the main players Dave Mayall has been absent for about a fortnight and I understand from a message I received a couple of days ago he will be off for another couple of weeks. I am a whole hearted supporter of Bob Phillips and his team in their endeavours to re-photograph the poorer quality images as long as they confine their efforts to transcriber requested rescans. Unfortunately they are not doing this and Bob has told me they are ignoring transcriber rescan requests. From the evidence of their efforts on behalf of my syndicate, the criteria they have adopted for selection means they have only picked up a handful of transcriber requested rescans I am convinced that the uploading of non-transcriber rescans requests must stop immediately. If this is not done we are piling up confusion and mayhem when the time comes for the second keying. The uploading of non-requested rescans places coordinators in a difficult position. In effect they are forced to get these unasked-for scans redone. If they are not redone the likelihood is that the second keying will be done using an enhanced image with the probability of an increased numbers of mismatched against the first keying. Second keying should only be done using the same source material. I have monitored and had a contingency plan for getting the approximately 3000 transcriber rescans generated by my syndicate members done when the new material was available. By extrapolating the numbers of non-transciber rescans that have been done within one quarter to all the work done by my syndicate, I find that the program that is underway will generate between 8000 and 10000 pages to be transcribed. The work in getting transcriber requested rescans re-done or amended is considerable, but the addition of unasked for rescans creates an unwelcome and unwanted addition. The handling of rescans is more time consuming than allocating and monitoring transcriber progress. The rescanned material is scattered randomly through a series of scans and whilst it is possible to isolate the new material it is also spread amongst (in my case) 40 or 50 transcribers at least. Each needs an e-mail for each batch of rescans to be done.

Hello John, Re: > I am a whole hearted supporter of Bob Phillips and his team in > their endeavours to re-photograph the poorer quality images as > long as they confine their efforts to transcriber requested > rescans. Unfortunately they are not doing this and Bob has told > me they are ignoring transcriber rescan requests. From the > evidence of their efforts on behalf of my syndicate, the criteria > they have adopted for selection means they have only picked up a > handful of transcriber requested rescans > I get my syndicate members to do the best they can with what is available. The standard that would be applied to request a rescan is different for every transcriber so I prefer the approach that uses the number of pieces of missing data in a file to decide if the image should be rescanned. I think this is the approach used by Bob. The number of pieces of missing data is something worth debating but I know from experience with some of the scans my group has transcribed that a standard that would make everybody happy results in so many rescans that Bob could never do it. I am happy to either get the original transcriber to update their file or to reallocate the rescan to a new transcriber. Re: > I am convinced that the uploading of non-transcriber rescans > requests must stop immediately. I do not agree with this and I can't see why there is a problem. Re: >The uploading of non-requested rescans places > coordinators in a difficult position. In effect they are forced > to get these unasked-for scans redone. If they are not redone > the likelihood is that the second keying will be done using an > enhanced image with the probability of an increased numbers of > mismatched against the first keying. Second keying should only > be done using the same source material. I obviously disagree with the above. Second keying must be done using the same source but if the image is of better quality what is wrong with that. I am assuming that Bob's photographs are from the same base source. Regards Brian Smart