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This web site is intended to be easy to use and unless it is then it won't be successful, feedback and suggestions are always welcome. Look and Feel The pages on the site have a consistent look and feel, importantly at the top of each page there are four links in red. On the following line there maybe other links that will help you to navigate around the topic you are browsing. The topmost links are:
The index to the main topics is below the welcome picture. Topic links are in two columns, information about the web site and the Steer project are to the left, the others to the right are (or will be) links to historical records and articles. Only one of the latter is currently active, Record Collections, which will take you to the Country Record Collections Index from which you can select UK for the UK Census and GRO records. Clickable Ticks
The information on this web site will continue to grow but will be only a fraction of what is already known about Steers and their families from the past. If you are wanting to know more about your Steer ancestors, no matter how the surname was spelt, Steere, Steers, Steeres, Stear, Steares etc., then please contact me or the Steer mailing list. Record Affinity and Fidelity When looking at any record it important for the family historian to know how close and how faithful it is to the original, the affinity and fidelity levels are an attempt to measure this. Ideally original documents are consulted, or as near to the originals as are publically available, however, we rely greatly on transcriptions or copies made by others. Many of the records we use are copies of copies and each time a copy is made there is a chance that an error is introduced. The liklihood of a transcription error maybe small but if you are looking at a copy that is many times removed from the original then the accumulated errors can be significant. The faithfulness of a transcribed record can be restored, if only in part, by checking the transcription against the original or near original. Record affinity and fidelity is shown as two numbers in square brackets, e.g. [3/2]. The first measures how far removed the copy is from the original, starting with 1 for the original, say a birth record from someones family bible, 2 would be for a handwritten note of the entry and 3 could be if the note was typed into a computer document. The second number indicates any checking, if in the example the computer document was checked against the handwritten note then the fidelity would be 2, if checked against the original bible entry then it would be 1, if unchecked the fidelity would be 3. If it is suspected that more copying has been done than is known about then a plus sign is used to indicate this, e.g. [+3/2]. A record becomes more untrustworthy the higher the affinity and fidelity numbers are. Records can be copied in a number of ways each carrying a risk of introducing errors: handwritten, typed, processed by a computer, photocopied or filmed. Terms and Conditions of Use Please read the Terms and Conditions of Use. In short what is being said is that this site and the information it makes available are provided free by the efforts of a number of people, please respect that. The Terms and Conditions explain what informaton from this site can be used elsewhere and under what conditions. If you are a professional researcher or you are interested in more than your own family's history then it will be in your interests to contact me. Many thanks. |
An intention of this site is to encourage the sharing of information and further links facilitate this when you are browsing the records. Each historical record or entry has a tick (see the example here) which you can use to enquire about the people in the record or provide information about them. The ticks turn green when the mouse pointer is moved over them, if you click-the-tick by a record then a email will be opened giving details of the record and the person or persons. You can add your question or information to the email before sending it.