Hi all Forgive me for posting this reply on a public list but as someone with a past professional involvement in the compilation of the NZ BDM indexes I take a particular interest in the accuracy of those indexes and wanted to help set the record straight about them. Back in the late 1990s (before I got involved in genealogy), I personally wrote the specifications for the data capture of the BDM records and was then one of the team evaluating the tenders received for the work. But I changed employers soon after the contract was signed and therefore had no further professional involvement in the BDM project. There is much I could say about that project but it is inappropriate for me to do so in this forum except perhaps to say that I'm fully aware of the costs which were involved and the myriad of background issues, both technical and political/financial and the balances/compromises that must sometimes be made between what is desired and what is affordable. Like most on this list, I'm a frequent user of the BDM website. With many Scandinavian & other European names and their multiple spelling variations to research, I would 'really' love a wild card search facility. Also I've done a great deal of WW1 research and found a perhaps surprisingly high proportion of discrepancies between the DOBs on the WW1 files and the BDM records. Indeed with WW1 records, I've even found the occasional persons who lowered their age by more than 10 years. However, with considerable patience, diligence and imagination, most BDM entries can usually be found. The BDM indexes on microfiche provide an excellent and very useful cross-check facility against the website - but please remember that even the microfiche are not always infallible. I looked at three of the birth entries, you thought missing from 1860 and found all three: 'ALLAN, NR' can be found online spelt as 'ALLEN' in 1860. 'RIDDLE, Hellen Louisa' can be found spelt as 'RIDDELL' in 1860. 'DASH, Eugine Mary ' can be found, not in 1860 as thought, but in the following year as 1861/10856 DASH, Eugine Mary, parents Mary/Jacob - born 28 June 1861. Above all, please remember that until the last few decades, all registers were hand-written and some of this handwriting must have been a nightmare for the transcribers to decipher especially when dealing with names that were foreign to them or names that were a different spelling of a name the transcriber thought they knew well. Some suggestions, after you've exhausted the common spelling variations such as ALLAN/ALLEN, ANDERSON/ANDERSEN, etc: 1. Try looking a few years either side of the year you think the event occurred - often descendants remembered a birthday (ie day & month) but either didn't remember the correct year or had incorrect information for one reason or another. 2. Try dropping the O in front of Irish surnames such as O'CONNOR and look for plain CONNOR. 3. Try writing the name down yourself and looking at it very carefully through a transcriber's eyes - how might they have interpreted some of the letters? For example, a K instead of H, an R instead of N, an E instead of I and soon on.... And sometimes the last letter (especially an E) is either added or dropped by mistake - for example KEAN may become KEANE and vice versa. 4. If all else fails for a birth record, try searching under the mother's maiden surname. (For example, I eventually found one of my great-aunts in the BDM index quite by accident. She was #7 of 10 children and I'd already purchased birth printouts of all siblings in the pre-online days, so I knew her birth was registered correctly. But I could not for the life of me find her in the online index, until one day when I was researching for someone else and spotted my great-aunt indexed under her mother's maiden surname. In this example, the microfiche has her name recorded correctly but the online index was wrong). 5. Lastly, I finally found the death of my gg-grandfather McLAREN, had been recorded (by the Registrar of the day) as McLEAN. In that case, the informant/funeral director was a McLEAN and someone had got the two names confused at the time the death was registered. There was an obituary in the local paper for my ancestor, he had a probate file and his headstone is still legible - and all of these sources show him correctly as McLAREN. The handwriting on the death registration was very clear but it was wrong and because of this, the subsequent transcriptions to both the microfiche and the website are 'correct but wrong'. Hope some of these suggestions help others in their research Angela This email has been scanned by BullGuard antivirus protection. For more info visit www.bullguard.com

Thank you for an excellent explanation and the searching hints Angela. I am sure the suggestions will be very helpful to other list members. I certainly agree that the birthdates on WW1 files cannot be relied on but do help as a starting point in researching the particular person. Keep up the great work. Regards Allan Sunny Waikouaiti. -----Original Message----- From: Angela Reynolds Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2017 1:13 PM To: 'Olwyn Whitehouse' ; 'new-zealand' Subject: Re: [nz] NZ Births Index -missing names Hi all Forgive me for posting this reply on a public list but as someone with a past professional involvement in the compilation of the NZ BDM indexes I take a particular interest in the accuracy of those indexes and wanted to help set the record straight about them. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

Another error is "Mother's name?" and the father has been wetting the baby's head and replies with HIS mother's name. There is also the case of course the mother being Mrs. Smith so gets recorded as "Jane Smith" Brian Fleming Melbourne

Hi All: The Registrar-General has replied re a “missing” death which was in the microfiche of 1976 deaths, saying the entry was missed off the historic online website but is now there. The 1976 death was of Stewart Wilburn LINDSAY, born 13 December 1901, and registered 1902 (a pre-Christmas birth to Joseph and Mary!) and died 16 August 1976. He is buried in the Owaka Cemetery. NB: birth has "Willburn" but death has "Wilburn". Yours, John Wilson Thank you for your email and apologies for the delay. A check of our death records has been made. I confirm while we have the image this was missed off the online website. This has now been upgraded and should now show in the online website. In regards to the birth entry, I have checked the record and can confirm that the details we have recorded are correct according to the original paper-based registration.

I'm not sure if it's because the whole thing was written in some sort of Microsoft application, but whoever signed off on the current site should be taken around the back of the bike sheds and introduced to Mr Cluebat. Every HTML page sends down a huge chunk of javascript and CSS which should be isolated into separate files for efficiency. Over 100kB of data sent to you just to get the maybe 50 bytes of data you want to see. If you're accessing the website via cellphone data that's why you keep running up on your monthly limit so quickly. Weirdly a lot of the CSS and Javascript is for in-house users (who are editing data) so it may even be a security risk including all that data in pages sent to public users as it may give clues regarding how to hack into their system. Also, a while back they changed the "registration number" of many (all?) of the records on the site, so if you carefully filed away the NZBDM reference in your ancestor records, it no longer applies. For instance, in deaths 1879/8345 KING Hannah Pauline is now 1879/4277 - whose bright idea was THAT? And as for 1751/2 KING Hannah, that's an early death! Then there's this mailing list which now includes bucket loads of "X-Microsoft-Exchange-Diagnostics" headers with each message sent. There seems to be a theme appearing - inefficient Microsoft software. > >

Can someone tell me how to notify the people in charge when you find an incorrect entry on BDMs? Jeanette Sent from my iPad > On 22/01/2017, at 13:13, Angela Reynolds <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi all > > Forgive me for posting this reply on a public list but as someone with a > past professional involvement in the compilation of the NZ BDM indexes I > take a particular interest in the accuracy of those indexes and wanted to > help set the record straight about them. > > Back in the late 1990s (before I got involved in genealogy), I personally > wrote the specifications for the data capture of the BDM records and was > then one of the team evaluating the tenders received for the work. But I > changed employers soon after the contract was signed and therefore had no > further professional involvement in the BDM project. There is much I could > say about that project but it is inappropriate for me to do so in this forum > except perhaps to say that I'm fully aware of the costs which were involved > and the myriad of background issues, both technical and political/financial > and the balances/compromises that must sometimes be made between what is > desired and what is affordable. > > Like most on this list, I'm a frequent user of the BDM website. With many > Scandinavian & other European names and their multiple spelling variations > to research, I would 'really' love a wild card search facility. Also I've > done a great deal of WW1 research and found a perhaps surprisingly high > proportion of discrepancies between the DOBs on the WW1 files and the BDM > records. Indeed with WW1 records, I've even found the occasional persons > who lowered their age by more than 10 years. > > However, with considerable patience, diligence and imagination, most BDM > entries can usually be found. The BDM indexes on microfiche provide an > excellent and very useful cross-check facility against the website - but > please remember that even the microfiche are not always infallible. > > I looked at three of the birth entries, you thought missing from 1860 and > found all three: > 'ALLAN, NR' can be found online spelt as 'ALLEN' in 1860. > 'RIDDLE, Hellen Louisa' can be found spelt as 'RIDDELL' in 1860. > 'DASH, Eugine Mary ' can be found, not in 1860 as thought, but in the > following year as 1861/10856 DASH, Eugine Mary, parents Mary/Jacob - born 28 > June 1861. > > Above all, please remember that until the last few decades, all registers > Hi all > > Forgive me for posting this reply on a public list but as someone with a > past professional involvement in the compilation of the NZ BDM indexes I > take a particular interest in the accuracy of those indexes and wanted to > help set the record straight about them. > > Back in the late 1990s (before I got involved in genealogy), I personally > wrote the specifications for the data capture of the BDM records and was > then one of the team evaluating the tenders received for the work. But I > changed employers soon after the contract was signed and therefore had no > further professional involvement in the BDM project. There is much I could > say about that project but it is inappropriate for me to do so in this forum > except perhaps to say that I'm fully aware of the costs which were involved > and the myriad of background issues, both technical and political/financial > and the balances/compromises that must sometimes be made between what is > desired and what is affordable. > > Like most on this list, I'm a frequent user of the BDM website. With many > Scandinavian & other European names and their multiple spelling variations > to research, I would 'really' love a wild card search facility. Also I've > done a great deal of WW1 research and found a perhaps surprisingly high > proportion of discrepancies between the DOBs on the WW1 files and the BDM > records. Indeed with WW1 records, I've even found the occasional persons > who lowered their age by more than 10 years. > > However, with considerable patience, diligence and imagination, most BDM > entries can usually be found. The BDM indexes on microfiche provide an > excellent and very useful cross-check facility against the website - but > please remember that even the microfiche are not always infallible. > > I looked at three of the birth entries, you thought missing from 1860 and > found all three: > 'ALLAN, NR' can be found online spelt as 'ALLEN' in 1860. > 'RIDDLE, Hellen Louisa' can be found spelt as 'RIDDELL' in 1860. > 'DASH, Eugine Mary ' can be found, not in 1860 as thought, but in the > following year as 1861/10856 DASH, Eugine Mary, parents Mary/Jacob - born 28 > June 1861. > > Above all, please remember that until the last few decades, all registers > were hand-written and some of this handwriting must have been a nightmare > for the transcribers to decipher especially when dealing with names that > were foreign to them or names that were a different spelling of a name the > transcriber thought they knew well. > > Some suggestions, after you've exhausted the common spelling variations such > as ALLAN/ALLEN, ANDERSON/ANDERSEN, etc: > > 1. Try looking a few years either side of the year you think the event > occurred - often descendants remembered a birthday (ie day & month) but > either didn't remember the correct year or had incorrect information for one > reason or another. > > 2. Try dropping the O in front of Irish surnames such as O'CONNOR and look > for plain CONNOR. > > 3. Try writing the name down yourself and looking at it very carefully > through a transcriber's eyes - how might they have interpreted some of the > letters? For example, a K instead of H, an R instead of N, an E instead of > I and soon on.... And sometimes the last letter (especially an E) is either > added or dropped by mistake - for example KEAN may become KEANE and vice > versa. > > 4. If all else fails for a birth record, try searching under the mother's > maiden surname. (For example, I eventually found one of my great-aunts in > the BDM index quite by accident. She was #7 of 10 children and I'd already > purchased birth printouts of all siblings in the pre-online days, so I knew > her birth was registered correctly. But I could not for the life of me find > her in the online index, until one day when I was researching for someone > else and spotted my great-aunt indexed under her mother's maiden surname. > In this example, the microfiche has her name recorded correctly but the > online index was wrong). > > 5. Lastly, I finally found the death of my gg-grandfather McLAREN, had been > recorded (by the Registrar of the day) as McLEAN. In that case, the > informant/funeral director was a McLEAN and someone had got the two names > confused at the time the death was registered. There was an obituary in the > local paper for my ancestor, he had a probate file and his headstone is > still legible - and all of these sources show him correctly as McLAREN. The > handwriting on the death registration was very clear but it was wrong and > because of this, the subsequent transcriptions to both the microfiche and > the website are 'correct but wrong'. > > Hope some of these suggestions help others in their research > Angela > > > This email has been scanned by BullGuard antivirus protection. > For more info visit www.bullguard.com > > > > > The List Guidelines > > http://new-zealand-l.blogspot.com/ > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message