Holiday inputting challenge - Update, December 27, 2017

Since November 20, 2017, we've completed the following numbers of soldiers.

Project 1 - 59
Project 2 - 413

Total - 472

We're in the home stretch. Even with several people still on vacation, I think you can reach the goal. Good luck and keep up the great work!

Holiday inputting challenge - Update, December 19, 2017

Since November 20, 2017, we've completed the following numbers of soldiers.

Project 1 - 54
Project 2 - 339

Total - 393

Keep up the great work!

Updates and completed family trees

Just a couple of reminders . . .

If you work outside the office, your weekly progress reports are due to me every Wednesday by noon, eastern time. If you have shared your log with me, there is no need for a separate update, but please make sure you've updated your log. I'm trying to provide an accurate report of our progress to senior staff.

Your completed family trees are due when you complete your assignment, not weeks later or when I remind you. It's fine if it takes you a few days to download them all. It's fine if you're sending out a couple soldiers on the completed list for checks and want to send me the assignment all at once. If you will be delayed more than a week in sending me your completed trees or saving them to the file server, just send me a quick email letting me know. This will help me keep my records accurate.

Please let me know if you have questions or concerns. Thanks!

Holiday inputting challenge - Update, December 11, 2017

Since November 20, 2017, we've completed the following numbers of soldiers.

Project 1 - 45
Project 2 - 234

Total - 279

Keep up the great work!

November 2017 checking stats

In November, we checked 38 soldiers under our system. 

I've reviewed all of the checks, and I've tallied the number of differences. Some of these are errors, and some are judgment calls. Here are the categories and the total number of differences for each category.

GRID Errors

MILIN?/MAR? - 4
Missing HH member - 0
Duplicate people - 7
Wrong person - 2
Other - 1

Inferred Relationships

Incorrect relationships - 15

Census Errors

Name - 18
Typo/Reading/Wrong - 40
State Code - 0
Missing/Wrong URL - 1
Missing data - 22
Additional finds - 20
Quality Code - 13

Death Errors

Typo/Reading/Wrong - 10
Missing data - 15
Missing/Wrong URL/Source - 10
Quality Code - 6
Additional finds - 20

Tree Errors

Missing/Incorrect information/relationships - 8

The total number of differences for all 38 soldiers is 212. This is 73 fewer differences than October, when we checked 40 soldiers. Some differences/errors affect the data more than others. If we checked other pensions, we'd probably find similar differences. Some mistakes are inevitable, but please pay close attention so that the number of errors can be minimized.

Holiday inputting challenge - Update, December 4, 2017

Since November 20, 2017, we've completed the following numbers of soldiers.

Project 1 - 29
Project 2 - 142

Total - 171

Keep up the great work!

The Complete button

If you go into a soldier that is already complete, that is, you've hit the Complete button, and add additional information, please hit the Complete button again.

This doesn't have any effect on your end of the screens, but it does engage tags on the back end. Your data will be saved even if you forget to hit Complete again. We'd just like to make things easier when we pull data from the system to be delivered to the professors.

Holiday inputting challenge - Update!

I hope you have all recovered from your Thanksgiving feasts and are ready to crush our holiday inputting challenge. Good luck!

Since November 20, 2017, we've completed the following numbers of soldiers.

Project 1 - 10
Project 2 - 52

Total - 62

Adding a 2nd parent

Last night we updated the VCC screens. You've already seen changes to the Update Relations page. Now there are also changes to the Create New Member window. If you don't see the changes when you log in to the VCC screens today, please refresh your browser.

Beginning today (November 21), please use these features for ALL the veterans' children and grandchildren. Please make sure this has been completed when you are doing your checks.

The reason for these changes is that we want to link the veteran's children, and grandchildren to BOTH of their parents. Sometimes, the veteran or his children will have multiple spouses; these new features allow us to assign the correct parents to each child.

We have added a new feature to the Create New Member Window (that you access using the Add New Member button). There is a new drop-down box called, "2nd Parent ID." Whereas previously we could only record a single parent, now we will be able to link a child to both of her/his parents.

We have added a new feature to the Update Relations Page.  There is a new column called "2ndParent."  This feature is the same as the 2nd Parent ID in the Create New Member Window. You will use it when people have already been added to the Grid, and you need to update the relationship information.

Here is a table showing how you assign Relation Codes and IDs:

	Relation/Rel Code	Relation ID	2nd Parent Id/2ndParent
Veteran	Veteran	00	blank
Veteran's Parents	Parent	00	blank
Veteran's Siblings	Sibling	00	blank
Veteran's Children	Child	00	ID of child's mother
Child's mother unknown	Child	00	UN
Veteran's Grandchildren
Both parent's known	Child	ID veteran's child	ID child's other parent
One parent known	Child	ID of known parent	UN
No parent's known	Grand	00	blank
Step Children	Child	ID of biological parent	blank
Other people on Grid	Follow current rules	Follow current rules	blank

 In the example below, George Vandercook, PID 10, is the child of the veteran 00 and Phillipina Miller PID 09.  Gracie and Reuben are also children of the veteran and Phillippina.  

Nellie Vandercook (PID 15) is the child of the veteran and his second wife Hester Vandercook (PID13).  If you do not know the mother of the child, select UN.   

The vet's son George (10) marries Elizabeth (17).  Children from this couple, Audrey (18) and Lyman (19), are marked as children of George (10) in the first column and of Elizabeth (17) in the second column.   George, as the son of the vet, is marked as the parent in the first column. 

The vet's daughter Nellie (15) marries Perry Davenport (22).  Their child Ruth (23)  is marked as child of Nellie in the first column and Perry in the second column.  Nellie is listed as the 1st parent because she is the daughter of the vet.

Note:  Lynn (21) is the great grandchild of the veteran, so I did not put her 2nd Parent in even though we know her mother is Helen (20), the spouse of Lyman (the vet's grandson).  We only need to mark 2nd parent for children and grandchildren. If you mark 2nd Parent for a great grandchild, there is no need for checkers to make note it.

It is so important that you assign children and grandchildren two parents, that when you have finished all the work for this veteran and hit Complete, an Alert window will appear that says, "Have you assigned both parents for all the children and grandchildren of the veteran?" Hit OK to acknowledge the message. If you forgot to assign parents, please do so immediately.

Please read this post TWICE. Email to let me know you've read it.

Holiday inputting challenge!

The holiday season is upon us. We'd like to avoid getting behind on our inputting targets, so we're going to have a holiday inputting challenge. That is, between now and New Year's day, we're going to try to complete 500 soldiers.

I know a lot of you have exciting holiday plans and vacations coming up, but this is a doable goal. I came up with the number based on how many soldiers you usually complete every week. This goal will be a little bit more difficult than our summer inputting challenge, but I think you can do it. Most of you are working on Project 2 soldiers, and they generally take less time to complete than Project 1 soldiers.

Of course, I still want you to do good-quality work (no Maureen-quality work). We don't want to cut quality in service of quantity. We're a little behind because of people leaving and inputters spending part of their time on cleaning and coding data, so we want to try to catch up.

On Tuesday morning, January 2, 2018, I will run my inputting reports for both Projects 1 and 2. If you've completed 500 soldiers, you will each get to add an average day's worth of hours to your time sheet (or take a day off if you always turn in 40 hours). I will figure out this number for each of you. If you average 5 hours per day this holiday season, you'll get to add 5 hours to your time sheet. Sound good?

I know you all are up for this challenge. Keep in mind, all soldiers that Sandy, Noelle, or I complete will count toward the 500.

Good luck, and happy inputting!

Progress report for November 1

Here is our progress as of November 1, 2017.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	7535	2876
Soldiers completed during last  week	26	51
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	666	514
% of completed soldiers w/o children	8.8	17.9
Soldiers with children complete	6869	2362
% with children complete	80.8	52.5

I don't know if all of you know how to read this report. The "n =" numbers at the top are our inputting goals for each sample. So, we want to complete 4,500 Project 2 soldiers who have children (because we're studying the children). The last two rows of the table show our total progress toward that goal.

October 2017 checking stats

In October, we checked 40 soldiers under our system. 

I've reviewed all of the checks, and I've tallied the number of differences. Some of these are errors, and some are judgment calls. Here are the categories and the total number of differences for each category.

GRID Errors

MILIN?/MAR? - 0
Missing HH member - 2
Duplicate people - 2
Wrong person - 0
Other - 4

Inferred Relationships

Incorrect relationships - 8

Census Errors

Name - 11
Typo/Reading/Wrong - 70
State Code - 0
Missing/Wrong URL - 1
Missing data - 15
Additional finds - 27
Quality Code - 16

Death Errors

Typo/Reading/Wrong - 8
Missing data - 68
Missing/Wrong URL/Source - 12
Quality Code - 5
Additional finds - 19

Tree Errors

Missing/Incorrect information/relationships - 17

The total number of differences for all 40 soldiers is 285. This is 69 more differences than July, when we checked 42 soldiers. Some differences/errors affect the data more than others. If we checked other pensions, we'd probably find similar differences. Some mistakes are inevitable, but please pay close attention so that the number of errors can be minimized.

Project 2 and checking

I've recently given nearly all of you a Project 2 assignment (a couple of you are doing other things and have been given a temporary reprieve). There is a strong possibility that we will have to cut our sample size, and we cannot cut soldiers from Project 2. We need all of your help to complete it. Project 2 is so much smaller than Project 1 that we will need the whole sample to provide good information to users.

Since Project 2 is more difficult than Project 1, we'd like the soldiers that get checked to come from Project 2. So, beginning in November, if you have a Project 2 assignment, please send your partner two soldiers from that list to be checked.

Any questions?

Income in 1940

In 1940, census enumerators were instructed to enter an individual's income on the census. If that income was over $5,000, the enumerator was to enter: $5,000+. Since we cannot include the "+" in the Income field, please do the following, beginning immediately.

Type 5000 in the Income field
Type Income: $5,000+ in the individual's Remarks field

Here are the instructions for the enumerators:

https://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/inst1940.shtml