This section of the Kent OPC web site is intended for people who are interested in volunteering to take a position as an Online Parish Clerk for one or more parishes in the Kent OPC project.  After you have finished reading through the duties and responsibilities of an Online Parish Clerk, please fill out and submit our on-line Volunteer Form.

If you are merely interested in learning if there is an OPC for a particular parish please see the Parish List.  If you are having difficulty reaching an OPC please write to me, Susan Young, at administrator@kent-opc.org.  If you have any transcripts that you would like to share through the Kent OPC project please contact me, as above noted, or contact the OPC for the parish, if there be one, for which you have transcripts.  We would be grateful for your contribution and look forward to having you join our project as a casual contributor.

The idea of the Online Parish Clerks that is proposed by the Kent OPC project should in no way be confused with that of an official Parish Clerk, who is appointed by a County Council.  The term OPC as used in the context of the Kent OPC project refers to individuals who hold genealogical-related materials such as, but not limited to, parish registers, land tax assessments, tax lists, voter's rolls, census and such like.

Duties and Responsibilities of an OPC

1.  All Online Parish Clerks (hereinafter referred to as "OPC"s) are simply willing volunteers and as such are unpaid.  Any expenses you incur that are related to your transcription of records for your parish or in receiving of and responding to email or postal-directed mail, or in the registration, setup and/or maintenance of an independent web site or web page(s) are strictly at your own cost.  The Kent OPC project is in no manner responsible for any costs that you may incur in the commission of your duties as an OPC for this project irrespective of the number of parishes for which you volunteer and act as OPC.

2.  As an OPC you will access, collect and collate records for your chosen parish or parishes as those records become available and as your time and resources permit.  Records should cover as broad a spectrum as possible but remain specific to your OPC parish or parishes.  For example, records can be parish registers, census returns, tax records, parish histories, newspapers both current and historical and postal directories.  Suggested records for transcription, extraction, abstraction and indexing (hereinafter collectively referred to as "your work") are set out on the various parish pages posted on the www.kent-opc.org web site.  See this page as an example of the records desired.  The records listed on the parish pages are of value to all genealogical researchers but I recognize that there are many other record groups and classes that are not yet added to the parish page lists.  If you have a record source that is not listed amongst the records on the parish page please let me know and I can add it under the appropriate category before your work is received.  It is envisioned that with diligent collection and collation of records across many classes and time periods an OPC could eventually assemble a record of every individual who lived in a parish from earliest times to approximately 1900.

3.  As a parish OPC you will, as your time permits, transcribe, abstract, extract or index the material in your possession with a view to posting your work or a link to your work on the Kent OPC project web site.  If you wish, you may confine your activities to simply carrying out lookups in your work(s) and in your collection of records rather than posting your work on the internet.

4.  You will be required to record the original source of any data from which you have produced a work.  The source information should include the full title of the original source and its type e.g. book, microfilm, CD-Rom, et cetera;  the name of its publisher, editor or compiler;  the name and address of the publisher;  the year of publication;  any ISBN or ISSN;  the location of the source including the full name of the library, archive or repository where it was consulted, the date it was consulted;  the address of the institution and if applicable, the call number;  and the general condition of the source.  A source citation form is posted here in PDF format for your use in recording this data.  An abbreviated source citation should be submitted with your work so that it may be included with your work on the Kent OPC web site.  An example of an abbreviated source citation would be, in the case of a census:  18-- Enumerator's Returns for England and Wales, as found on LDS microfilm #0542022.

5.  If you wish to produce a work that is to be posted to the internet, then, ideally the work should cover one or more complete pages of a source rather than just be a name-specific index of that source.  Similarly, by way of guidance, if you wish to produce a partial work from a record such as a parish register, then, in that case, the work should cover a specified period of time such as 25 or more consecutive years.  In short supply is ready access to the parish registers that were maintained even during the time of the English Civil War and subsequent Interregnum, or the years 1642 through 1659.  Works covering this period would be of enormous benefit to many researchers.

6.  As your time and resources are valuable to you, it is my request that the commonly available records be approached last.  For instance, the Kent Archaeological Society ("KAS") has performed a valuable service by transcribing and posting on their own web site the monumental inscriptions completed by Leland Duncan throughout Kent.  Similarly, the KAS is making available the tithe apportionment maps with lists of householders and occupiers.  Links to both of those resources have been added to each Kent OPC parish page as a matter of course.  Accordingly, no further transcription of those particular sources is required.  Links to historic postal directories as posted on the historicaldirectories.org web site will also eventually be added to each parish page.  Again, the reworking of this source is discouraged.  However, if you have a source that is not covered by these types of sources, such as monumental inscriptions recorded inside a crypt or church, then, in that instance, a work covering those inscriptions would be very valuable to our readers.  In respect of postal directories a work covering very specific groups of individuals over two or more directory years can be posted to the Kent OPC web site under the "General Kent Records" section.  In this regard, an enumeration of photographers operating throughout Kent and the years of their operation would be of great interest.  Similarly, works enumerating the location of jails, hospitals, asylums, sanitariums and children's homes would also be of great interest.

7.  I would like to be able to add an image of a true parish map (not to be confused with an ordnance survey map) to every Kent OPC parish as part of its standard stock and call upon all OPCs to attempt to locate a parish map that pertains to your chosen parish.

8.  You are responsible for maintaining backup copies of all of your original electronic data and works and ensuring that your data and works are protected from loss, damage or corruption.  This can be achieved by archiving your data and works at least one time per week to floppy disk, CD-Rom or DVD, emailing it to a third party for safe-keeping or uploading it to a private independent storage web space.  These precautions are to reduce the chance of the loss of all of your dedicated hard work.  The entire Kent OPC project web site is routinely backed up to CD-Rom.  Both of our efforts in preserving the integrity of our work and data should lessen the risk of a catastrophic loss of data should the web site become destabilized at any time and for any reason.

9.  When the data that you have accumulated is transcribed or otherwise turned into a work and is ready to be added to the OPC parish page, please do not convert your work to HTML code.  HTML coding of all works will be completed by me so as to ensure its compatibility with the Unix server on which the Kent OPC web site now resides.  Simply submit your work to me as an attachment to an email or on floppy disk by postal-directed mail as a text file, a MS Word file, a cvs file, or as an Excel spreadsheet or MS Access database file. Producing census transcriptions in Excel or cvs format is encouraged as that is the format used by the FreeCEN project.  Although it is not mandatory, I would ask that every contributor of census transcriptions give some thought to also contributing their transcript to the FreeCEN project.  If you do wish to contribute your census transcription to FreeCEN I would ask that you please print out and read each of these documents:  Read Me,  Introduction,  Tips,  Census Demo Spreadsheet  and  Blank Census Spreadsheet, the last two of which should be downloaded and saved to your computer.

10.  You will be solely responsible for producing works that do not infringe the copyright of other agencies, institutions, organizations, commercial ventures or individuals.  Under no circumstances must the rights of copyright owners be breached.  If it is possible that your works may, in some way, infringe an existing copyright it is your sole responsibility to seek and obtain written copyright permission and any waivers of fees or royalties necessary from the proper copyright owner permitting not only the transcription of the source under copyright but also permitting the material to be displayed on the Kent OPC web site.  There is much information already available in the Public Domain and permission is usually given to publish transcripts of parish registers and census returns.  Additionally, the various record offices will provide advice on copyright permissions and waivers on a case by case basis regarding the material they hold.  In general, there is no need to seek permission to transcribe or index material held by the National Archives and you can read their rules concerning copyright on their web site.  A copy of any copyright permissions and/or waivers received from a copyright owner, as contemplated here, shall be forwarded to me with your work.  If it is clear that a copyright permission or waiver is required from a third party and no such permission or waiver accompanies your work, your work shall not be posted until I have received a copy of the requisite permission and/or waiver, granted to you, from you.

11.  All copyrights attached to transcriptions, extracts, abstracts, indices, photographs and images that you produce and contribute to the Kent OPC project remain your sole intellectual property.  As such, you are free to continue to hold, enjoy, sell, transfer or otherwise deal or trade in your intellectual property as you deem fit.  All potential or future sales, assignments, or transfers of your ownership in the said copyright will need to include a continuation of free grant to the use of the said intellectual property, as contributed to the Kent OPC project, to the Kent OPC project in perpetuity.  At the time that you submit a work to me for posting to the Kent OPC web site you shall also forward an email to me in the form linked here granting your permission in respect of your own copyright in your work.  If the copyright permission and waiver email is not received with the submission of one of your works, that work shall not be published to the Kent OPC web site until I have received the requisite copyright permission from you to so do.

12.  You may seek out and appoint one or more individuals to assist you in your tasks as an OPC but you shall co-ordinate all transcripts, ensure those are in the acceptable file formats for submission to the Kent OPC web site and administer all relevant copyright requirements.