VOLUNTEERING AT HOME
GET INVOLVED!
Introduction
Volunteering with the Society is a rewarding way to make a meaningful contribution – right from the comfort of your own home. We’re always looking for enthusiastic volunteers to assist with our ongoing projects, particularly transcribing information from photographed records and images.
Parish Register data is regularly added to Findmypast (FMP), generating royalties that help sustain the Society and keep membership subscriptions low.
Additional records are now being uploaded to the Members’ Area of our website, offering even greater value to our members.
As expectations grow for online access to key genealogical resources, the demand for digitised data continues to rise, but we can only meet this demand with the help of dedicated volunteers.
All contributions are deeply appreciated and help in the preservation and sharing of our local family history.
If you’re interested in lending a hand, please email us at info@northants–fhs.org and let us know which project you’d like to support.
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 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 an 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 225 booklets of memorials from around the county; more than when the video opposite was made. Due to ever-increasing postage costs, we felt it may be more useful to researchers for these to also be made 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 given.
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.