Family Historians to be Ambassadors for 2011 Census
It’s countdown to census time and family historians will no doubt have noticed that the 2011 census team has been engaging with the genealogy community since last autumn through a family history area on the website www.census.gov.uk/2011familyhistory
Family historians are invited to share their stories of how they have used the historic censuses in their research and post the stories on the census website. These stories have provided some of the most engaging content on the site. The census team has also created a fan page on Facebook www.facebook.com/2011censusfamilyhistory for members of the of the public to share their stories, tips and hints and tell how the’ ve used the census to find people from their past. The Facebook fanpage also links back to the Societ y of Genealogists Facebook fanpage so why not visit both? if you “like” them then you can follow news and updates about the census leading up to census night and, of course, hear what’s going on at the SoG.
The 2011 census website also includes tips on the census pages about tracing your family history and how the historic censuses can help. There is also a very useful free information leaflet on on the Society of Genealogists Website which will help you use the census records of England and Wales in your family history research
With census well and truly in our minds and the scehdules falling through our front door, more and more people are now signing up to the 2011 census Facebookpage and web pages. Will the 2011 census be of help to family historians in one hundred years? It’s up to the family history census ambassadors to ensure it is as complete a record as it can possibly be.
© 2011, Society of Genealogists. All rights reserved.
Filed under: Census
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It strikes me as somewhat hypocritical that the 2011 Census website (http://2011.census.gov.uk/2011FamilyHistory) is trying to use family historians to promote this census when this census will be useless to future family historians. Without all forenames and place of birth it will be impossible to identify any individual with any form of common name. Also I am amazed at the number of family history organisations that have “jumped on the bandwagon” and “liked” the facebook page http://www.facebook.com/2011censusfamilyhistory.
The 2011 census will be of little value to genealogists in 100 years time.
The lack of middle names, birth town / county, number of children from this marriage and number from previous relationships, will result in people not being able to help trace their ancestors using the 2011 census records.
This is a huge step backwards, in the 19th century and early 20th century, with less technology, the census records were far better than this current poor attempt. The Office for National Statistics should be ashamed of themselves.
I have filled in our 2011 census on-line and included second forenames where there was space. Presumably since the data is already in digital form they will not remove those additional names? They are hoping that 25% will do it on-line. The more people who do, the less likely they are to scrap the next one because of the cost.
One item on the plus side for this census is the question about relationship to previous person. In these days of partnerships rather than marriages and the prevalence of divorce, how often do you get households where one or more children are the woman’s and one or more the man’s from previous relationships and one or more are children from the current partnership?
Nothing to do with Genealogy or Family History, but those who have been visitors/members to the SoG in the last 12 years will be saddened to hear that former employee Sheila Marshalls husband David died `gently in his sleep` in a Cornish Hospice on Monday morning he was 61 and had been ill for some time, I`m sure you will join me in offering our deepest sympathy to Sheila Marshall and her family