The Minnesota Historical Society's free databases for births and deaths now have a new option: you can sprinkle them with WOTR (Write On The Record, and pronounced like 'water'). This allows you to add comments to the content of the record, and enrich it with information you have. If you want, you can contact others who have also left comments, or subscribe to get notified when comments are added by others. And as the records are enriched, your searches (and mine!) will be better too.

These databases are based on the official birth and death records collected by the Minnesota State Department of Health and are generally 20th century records. The years covered are listed on the search screens. Due to Minnesota privacy law, the time coverage for birth records is smaller than that for death records. For deaths, see the Minnesota Death Certificate Index. For births, see the Minnesota Birth Certificate Index.

Over time, as more and more researchers use this new tool, some of the frustrations inherent in searching these indexes will disappear. Consider the following:

• For the birth index which covers the years before the Ancestry.com index, WOTR will be a major help. Many babies born in the first decades of the 20th century were not named before the birth record was filled in. The index therefore includes thousands of babies with the surname and no given name. By adding given names, researchers will be able to do name searches and get valid results.

• Women can be harder to find than men in the deaths database, because the official certificate uses Mrs or Mrs. (yes, they are different!) before her given name. A researcher can use the "contains" feature for the given name to work around the use of this title, or other titles that were listed. [Note that though it is possible to ask that errors be corrected, the index is intended to reflect what's on the written record, whether that is accurate or not.] If that record is WOTRed, an index search will find the record in the typical fashion with surname and given name.

• Some women are listed as Mrs. (husband's given name). That's a little more difficult, especially if the surname is a common one as well. Not only does the researcher have to remember to use the "contains" feature, but also try her spouse's name. After WOTRing that record, an index search will find the record in the typical fashion.

• Then there are names that are actually misspelled on the record and in the index. My favorite is the death record for Andreas Rwd Larson, exactly as it appears on the death certificate. It makes sense when you spell his middle name out loud - R-U-U-D. A little sprinkling of WOTR will let others know that the index does reflect the actual record.

© 2008 Park Genealogical Books, Roseville MN

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