Talk:West Liberty Cemetery, Ohio County, West Virginia, USA

Some things to think about:


 * You may want to consider a formal HTML setup for a cemetery transcription page For example

This makes it a bit easier to extract information, and forces the transcriber to be a bit more careful about inserting speulative information into a cemetery transcription.

Whether or not you use the above format, or one of your own debvising, or none at all, keep in mind that cemetery transcription data is a valuable resource. It gains that vaue since its a primary record placed on the gravestone by contemporaries of the deceased. They presumably knew what the data was. But its status as a primary record is lost when "other information" is added to "make it more complete". The other information maybe helpful to be sure for other researchers, but it comes from someone not contemporary with the deceased---and so its value is different than the data originally placed on the stone. Hence, its important to make sure that original data is preserved and distinguished from later information.

its also important to distinguish a stone that is an original gravemarker, and one that is a cenotaph, placed there years later as a commemorative stone. or perhaps a replacement stone. Sometimes people mistake cenotaphs for original gravestones, or otherwise don't make the distinction, and draw erroneous conclusions because of it. A gravestone is a contempory record of the deceased. A cenotaph is what someone, perhaps many years later, thought. Not the same value at all.

Bill 14:46, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Details beyond simple text not as appears on original; comments appear in brackets: [ ]; "?" substituted for unknown letter(s)/word(s)/line(s); not all graves transcribed or photographed; grave numbers for the convenience of the transcriber and photographer only; photographs taken June/July 2000 by Kay King.