NARA's 1950 Census website development team has just made a wonderful improvement to the name search feature. Names transcribed by humans are now shown in the search results above and below the census page image. What does this mean? Let's look at an example.
Let's search for Mildred Lauska in Ohio. Fortunately, some human transcribed her name.
Here's the search result showing both OCR (optical character recognition) results AND human transcription results above the census page image in the upper right under "Matched Name(s)." (Click on the image for a bigger view.)
| Mildred Lauska, ED 92-47, with search result above the census page image |
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Here's the same search result showing both OCR (optical character recognition) results AND human transcription results below the census page. (Click on the image for a bigger view.)
- The OCR results generated by "Machine Learning (AI) Extracted Names" are shown first: Only Mildred's husband, "Lauska melvins" is boldfaced because OCR had not transcribed Mildred or their daughters Joanne and Judith.
- The "User Contributed Transcriptions" are shown second: All persons with the Lauska surname shown in bold: Melvin Lauska, Mildred Lauska, Joanne Lauska, and Judith Lauska.
| Mildred Lauska, ED 92-47, with search result below the census page image |
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Important Takeaways:
- Thank you for your transcriptions! They matter! They significantly improve the search results! In the Lauska family example, all four members of the household can easily be found instead of just one.
- Now You Can See Everyone's Transcriptions at Work! Yay!
- Narrowing your name search to include state and county always better if the name was significantly misread by the OCR and has not been transcribed, or contains common names (John, Smith, and so forth!)
- Thank you for your suggestions for website improvements!
