LEGIBILITY RATINGS
ON CENSUS CD'S
The following ratings are given to the census records as an aid to the purchaser. These ratings apply only to the left side of the page covering the surname, given name, sex, race, birth information, age, marriage. For detailed reasons for the limitation on the area rated, look = below.
RATING MEANING
GOOD=20 95% or better legible on the left side.
GOOD, ~90%=20 90% to 95% legible on the left side
Fair, ~85% (or 80%)=20 80% to 90% legible on the left side
Poor, ~ ? %=20 less than 80% legible on the left side
Census records differ enormously. Many were poorly maintained and have extensive damage to them from water mold, and more. Some records were poorly microfilmed to boot. Thus we needed a rating that could be applied in a relatively simple manner that would still allow us to give the purchaser an indication of the amount of information available to them on the records. Some records we have seen are excellent except that the surnames are illegible. One could quite correctly say that these pages are 95% legible yet they would be completely useless to you. Others are virtually complete until you get to the nativity data and then the rest of the page is completely faded away. Such pages again, could quite legitimately be said to be only 30% legible yet there is a great deal of information on such pages that is very useful. There are pages where the center is blank or extremely faded, the top is gone, the bottom is gone, and all manner of situations in between. And, what's more, any or all of these situations may be found within the pages of one counties census. We can not detail each and every page. Thus we settled on the a rating system based on the left side of the page only. If the data there is largely complete, then you have the vast majority of the information you came looking for and the rest is a bonus. If the data there is poor, then it doesn't really matter what the rest of the page looks like because you can't apply it to anyone. We hope these rating will be of benefit to you.
