The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 51 No.1 | June 2024

HGS News

Britons Dying Overseas (BDO), Phase 1

Little did we realise during May of 2022, when we started to advertise for transcribers, what an enormous task we had set ourselves, e.g. to complete the transcription of 86,498 hand-written cards before the close of 2024. However from day one we welcomed new transcribers to the team and as the autumn of 2022 came upon us it became clear that our progress was exceeding our expectations. As the northern hemisphere autumn progressed into winter we noted that we might improve on our forecast completion date of late 2024. Our progress hardly faltered as spring of 2023 came around because new team members in the southern hemisphere took up the slack and compensated for those in northern climes who found gardening a tempting alternative to sitting at a computer. And so it went on as the seasons changed until towards the latter part of 2023 we were forecasting a completion date of Q1/Q2 2024. Before we realized it the New Year was upon us and our progress continued apace until we completed our last transcription early in March 2024 and uploaded the transcripts to the HGS website shortly thereafter. In addition to welcoming the daily transcripts arriving from around the world there were other benefits not foreseen when we started this project – updates on weather conditions from where members of the team lived, an

introduction to ‘ice wine’ contributed by Allen who lives high in the Rocky Mountains of western Canada, articles from Sandi and Margaret about the pleasures and temptations to research more deeply into the tragedies lurking behind the index cards they were transcribing, progress reports on various transcriber grandchildren and other family members, descriptions of journeys made by camper van as Helen and her husband toured their native New Zealand etc., etc. By now, dear reader, we hope you are asking yourself ‘Who were these heroes of BDO transcription?’ so on the next page is the complete list of all members of HGS (and two non-members) who made it possible: Not forgetting David Bowman – our data analyst who developed and showed us how to transcription progress and identify progress targets to keep all of us focused when surely there were many times during the past two years when we asked ourselves ‘Why did we become involved in this project?’ On behalf of our Chairman, Tony Sinclair, and all HGS members around the world, our heartfelt thanks and gratitude goes out to all of the above for making our BDO Phase 1 transcription project the success that it has become. John Bowman use the all-important XL formulas that allowed us to measure and report our

Are you looking for that elusive family history book? Or one on local history? Perhaps we can help – contact Fiona at bookstall@hgs-online.org.uk

8