Q: When & how should I use the Category for Census Records?

A: Please review the following guidance.

The Census Records category is broken down into a number of sub-categories; firstly by geography. Within each country, you may find further sub-divisions, depending on how the census has been conducted over the years. At the lowest level, you will find an entry whose description begins with the year that census was taken.

Please note that categories automatically cascade up, so it is important only to pick the most specific category which begins with a year. Please do not select country or other regional level categories.

Q: When may I use a Census Record category?

A: Only when there is good documentary evidence.

Please restrict use of this category to individuals who have been unambiguously identified on the relavant census. It is expected that the appearance on the census will be described in the Narrative section of the individual's wiki page along with source information for the page within the census. Clearly one individual may appear on more than one census; please only select those categories which match the Narrative.

NB Categorisation is a separate finding aid to search. If a page is categorised as "1881 Census ENG & WLS" but that phase does not appear within the text of the narrative section, then the page will not be returned as part of a search for "1881 Census ENG & WLS".

Q: A Census isn't listed. Can it be added?

A: Yes, but only by one of the Admin team.

It is only intended to list those census events where the records are readily available and of use to the Reeves research community. For example, the 1911 Census for Scotland has yet to be released (expected April 2011) and is therefore not yet listed.

Also, we need to strike a careful balance to make sure categories remain useful. Too many categories, each with only a few wiki pages, actually detracts from the usefulness of categorisation. Presently, categories will only be created when there is a reasonable probability it might eventually contain more than ten individuals.

The Reeves surname occurs about 450 times per million names, representing about 1 in 2200 individuals. So to have a category with ten or members, we're looking at an overall population of at least 22,000 individuals (of all names) for that category. So a census covering less than 22,000 individuals is unlikely to meet the necessary threshold.

If you have a census in mind which you feel meets this threshold, please contact the TRP Admin team. You would greatly help us by citing the appropriate sources for the census and its geographic coverage.

Please remember you should ALWAYS add such information to the Narrative section of an individual's page, regardless of whether TRP additionally has an appropriate category.