Annotating Records
If you have additional information about one of the Census, Directory or
Tax Assessment records, you can annotate the record and contribute to our
knowledge base. The information you provide will be added to the viHistory
database and will be available to other visitors to the site.
To submit an annotation, click on the
symbol at the right of each line of most search results. A page will appear where you can submit your
information; the information will appear on this site. If the line also has a
symbol, that record already has annotations; click the symbol to view them.
The form asks for your name and email address. While your name will be displayed on this site with your annotation, your email address will not. The email address is requested so that the maintainers of this site can contact you for additional information or clarification if necessary.
If you want other visitors to the viHistory site to be able to contact you, make sure you enter a valid email address, and check the box labeled "Allow others to contact me via this email address". Your email address will still not be displayed anywhere, but others will be able to use an online form to send you a message. The sender will not be given your email address, and you can choose whether or not to reply.
In the Annotation text area, type in your annotation (or copy it from elsewhere and paste it here). Please give as much detail as possible, and include the source of your information (eg: family records, archive document, book or other publication, etc.). The text may be edited by the site maintainers for consistency, accuracy or clarity.
The information you provide will be stored in the viHistory database. None of this information will be sold, given away, or otherwise distributed to anyone outside the viHistory project. Only your name and the annotation text will be displayed here; all other data is restricted.
If you have information of interest but would rather not post it here, you can contact Patrick Dunae, the viHistory project director and web site editor. Contact information is provided on the About page.
Verification?
Why do we ask you to verify that you are a real, live human? And what's a spambot?
A spambot is an unpleasant bit of software that wanders around the web looking for places to post spam and other unwelcome junk. Spambots use input forms like the one on the viHistory annotations page to add advertising to a web site without permission. So we ask you to prove you are human by doing something that is easy for humans but hard for spambots. The image displayed in the Verify box contains a random string of five letters, made hard to read by messing them up, like this example.
All you have to do is read the letters in the image (CXBXZ in the example above) and type them into the input field above the image. If you can't read the letters (this does not necessarily mean you are not human!), just click where indicated and a new random string of letters will be displayed. If you type the letters in wrong (perhaps because you really are a spambot), you will get an error message, the annotations won't be saved, and a new set of letters will be displayed so you can try again.
Correcting Records
We want to ensure that our database of nominal census records and directory listings is accurate and authoritative. Inevitably, though, errors were made when nominal information was first recorded or when it was later transcribed. If you notice mistakes in the spelling of personal names or any other errors and inconsistencies with the data, please inform us. In cases where names were incorrectly spelled, or census households are wrongly described, we will correct the records in our database. In making these corrections, we are not tampering with the historical records. The original records — such as manuscript census schedules and printed directories — are preserved on microfilm and in archival repositories. Those are primary records and they will never be altered. Rather, we are concerned with digital data and with factual errors within the data. When we amend records in our digital database, we are simply providing researchers with more reliable data.
To report errors in the nominal data and to suggest corrections, please contact our project director and web site editor, Dr. Patrick Dunae. Contact information is provided on the About page.