Transferring Internment Data
I present this here as a way of documenting my own little method for transferring transcribed and compiled data relating to the Flat Branch Presbyterian Church Cemetery extracted from an independent website for use in a WeRelate format. This is not only presented as an education tool for other WeRelate users to utilize if wanted, but as a reminder to me how it was done for future use.
As a firm proponent of protecting the rights of others and properly crediting the hard work of diligent people who voluntarily transcribe these cemeteries, I believe this transfer method also preserves and respects any legal or presumed copyright protection the original transcriber and compilor of the information may expect in protecting and attributing their work while making it available to a wider audience.
Objective
My objective was to create a more useful cemetery page for WeRelate users by relaying key information about the cemetery. Obviously the most useful information is the identification of all headstones and showing the names of all the people buried in this cemetery. I could do this by transcribing the headstone data by hand, asking a church official for permission to copy the church records, or by finding a previous transcription of the cemetery. Luckily, the third method proved to be sufficient in this case.
Steps
- Locate a cemetery you would like to research and share with other WeRelate users.
- - In this case, I located Flat Branch Presbyterian Church's cemetery, took photos of the area and some of the headstones.
- Create a Place Name in WeRelate for the cemetery, if not already done.
- - I searched WeRelate to see if the cemetery located had been created. Since it had not, I created the new place name on WeRelate and filled in the information known and readily available.
- Find your on-line data source of information on the cemetery.
- - I searched Google, and it showed an Internet reference to the cemetery. I found the cemetery had been transcribed and the results compiled on the site for public view.
- - Copy contents of existing table.
- Open MS-Excel and create worksheets for your data.
- - Open a new Excel workbook, click cursor in Cell A1, and Paste the table copied from Ms. Gambrell's data table. This is the result.
- Copy Column A surnames and Paste in second worksheet column A.
- Format column A on worksheet 2 to eliminate duplicates.
- - Highlight column A
- - Press Data
- - Press Filter
- - Press Advanced Filer
- - Check box for Unique Records Only
- - Select Okay
- This was the result. The duplicate surnames are actually hidden, and I had a list of all the unique surnames identified.
- All of the names are actually still in the worksheet, but the duplicates are hidden. I now needed to create a list containing only the unique surnames and format the information to be acceptable to use in a WeRelate page.
- - Copy resulting column A and Paste in third worksheet column A
- - In column C of the first name on Row 1, add beginning brackets [[
- - In column D, type Surname:
- - In column E, type the formula =A1
- - In column F, add the separator |
- - In column G, type the formula =E1
- - In column H, add ending brackets ]]
- - In column I, add a comma ,
- - In column J, type the formula =C1&D1&E1&F1&G1&H1&I1
- - Hightlight cell J1 and drag down to last row where a name sits in column A
- The resulting spreadsheet looked like this. Column J now had a usable format to be carried over to my WeRelate page.
- Copy data and transfer to WeRelate.
- - Highlight the entries in column J
- - Copy data highlighted
- - Go to WeRelate page
- - If not already in Edit mode, select it.
- - In appropriate location, Paste data from spreadsheet column.
- Page should now contain a linked list of all surnames in the cemetery (in paragraph format).
Note: This process was done using MS-Excel 2003 version. The 2007 version will be under somewhat different commands, but the same process.
Other more advanced computer users may have other methods or further shortcuts, so your comments and suggestions are welcome here as an aid for myself and others.
--BobC 09:01, 16 April 2009 (EDT)
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