Transcribing Headstone Photographs

Overview

Headstone photographs have to be transcribed to make the information searchable.
We transcribe all factual information but do not record blessings, poetry etc.
We naturally encourage you to transcribe your own photos, but if you prefer not to we will happily accept the photos and arrange for the transcribing ourselves.
Before starting transcribing check on our website or elsewhere to see if transcripts already exist. It is much easier to simply enter the photo numbers than to transcribe the entire headstone.
If we have transcripts online already you MUST contact us for a copy that also includes the current person-ids, otherwise it is very difficult for us to match them up later.

Before transcribing, the photos must be re-numbered 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg... using the same order that the photos were taken.
There is no need to rename the photos manually. It can be done with one click. See here.
WARNING: If you made notes about certain photos when taking them you should create a backup copy of the photos before renaming them to allow you to refer to the original photo numbers.

The headstone details should be recorded in this spreadsheet which is then submitted along with the photographs. As stated above if we already have transcripts online you must ask us for a copy of the data that includes the person-ids rather than starting from scratch.
The spreadsheet contains three sheets, one for the inscriptions, one to describe the cemetery and one with detailed help instructions.
If a field is not present on the headstone, leave it blank. Eg. Do not enter "No Date" if a headstone has no date.
If a field is illegible leave it blank. Do not enter ? or ??
If a field is partly legible, enter as much as you can followed by ?
Do not enter [sic] or similar after a name. Put a comment in the remarks if necessary.
Nicknames go at the end of all first names in brackets, without inverted commas. Eg. William John (Bill). NOT William John ("Bill") or William (Bill) John or William John "Bill"
Do not use accented characters. Use the closest letter.
Please read the Help sheet for full instructions.

Excel's date handling is of no use for genealogical purposes:

It cannot handle dates prior to 1900.
It converts anything that looks even vaguely like a date into a date.
It changes the format of a cell from Text do Date without asking.
Its date format is the number of days since 1/1/1900, which can end up looking like a big number (eg. 12653) when stored on our database
The birth and death date columns in the template are formatted as text columns. Keep them in that format.
Enter all dates as eg. 27 Jan 1917. They will remain as text.
If you copy and paste a date into one of those cells, Excel may convert the field to a Date.
To successfully copy and paste a date as text, make sure the cell is formatted as text, then right click the cell and select Paste Special, Text.

Photos can be submitted in two ways:

Copy them to a USB stick or CD/DVD and post them to us. Contact us to request our mailing address.
Upload them to Dropbox and share that folder with contact@austcemindex.com.