HOWTO: Add tags to improve search results - Green-Wood-Cemetery/burial-registry-search GitHub Wiki

"Type what you see" in the original document is a common practice in historical transcription (see: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/transcribe/tips). However, that practice can hinder researchers who might need to locate records using search terms not found in the original document. For example, first name abbreviations (Geo. instead of George) or archaic medical terms (consumption instead of tuberculosis).

To address this situation, we will add and maintain an extra column in the spreadsheet delivered by the transcription service with the heading "Tags." This column will contain a comma separated list of tags enclosed in double quotes.

Example: "George", "tuberculosis"

This column will be included in the search index so that researchers searching for "George" or "tuberculosis" will still get results where the original document contained "Geo." and "consumption."