I love OCR (optical character
recognition) technology! Because of OCR, companies can publish a lot
of records in a short time because the information doesn't require
humans to index the text. However, the fatal flaw of OCR is that it
doesn't pick up everything. If the print on the page is not nearly
perfect then it is not recognized correctly. While I have known this
for a while, sometimes I forget.
Don't get me wrong, I think OCR is
great! Without it, a lot of the records I have used (newspapers,
city directories, etc.) wouldn't be available on the web.
Unfortunately, the fact that so many records can be found by just
doing a name search alone tends to make me complacent at times.
While searching for my family in city directories at Ancestry.com, I
was excited to find so many directories for the places my relatives
lived. But then, it occurred to me that I wasn't finding my family
in as many directories as I would have expected.
“Wait,” I thought to myself, “this
is OCR.” I realized that I had to stop relying on the crutch of a
search engine. I needed to inspect each directory myself to make
sure I wasn't missing anything. As much of a pain in the neck as it
would prove, my task was clear. While it would take more time to go
to the card catalog and navigate to each directory, if I wanted the
records, I had no choice.
Since I have been checking individual
city directories I have succeeded in finding my family in more
records. When I can, I try to add them to my online tree, but
because of OCR the name doesn't always show up as a possibility to
attach. Oh well, at least I know they are there. I guess others
will have to track them down themselves.
The moral of this story is: Don't grow
complacent; remember OCR's weakness and search the old-fashioned way.
