THE RYERSON INDEX

to death notices and obituaries in Australian newspapers

DETERMINING the NOTICE TYPE

 

In the Good Old Days, it was simple. A Death Notice was published to advise of a death, and a day or two later a Funeral Notice was published to advise the funeral details.

Then things got a bit more complicated. The newspapers started to jack up the cost of publishing a notice, on the basis they had a captive market.

So people fought back - they cut out one of the notices, and combined the death and funeral notices into a single notice.

As we index these combined death/funeral notices, there is always confusion (particularly among new indexers) as to whether to label the notice a Death Notice or a Funeral Notice.

The purpose of the Notice Type is to point a researcher to the correct section of the paper, so the notice is easily found. This may not be a big issue with country papers, where all the deaths and funerals are easily covered on the one page. But for a paper the size of the "Sydney Morning Herald" or the "Herald Sun", Death Notices and Funeral Notices quite often appear on different pages.

So, bearing in mind the purpose of the Notice Type, the type to select becomes simple. If the notice is published under the heading "Death Notices", then it is a Death Notice. If the notice is published under the heading "Funeral Notices", then it is a Funeral Notice.

It doesn't matter that the notice published under the "Death Notices" heading looks just like a funeral notice. It is the heading which matters, nothing else.

There are five possible values which the Notice Type can take:

  1. Death Notice
  2. Funeral Notice
  3. Legal Notice (sometimes published as Probate Notice, or Distribution of Estate)
  4. Obituary
  5. Other
The first four are obvious, based on the heading under which the notice is published.

The "Other" notice type is a recent addition to cover the various headings which are now starting to appear in newspapers, such as "Bereavements". We have taken the approach of using a generic term "Other" rather than try and accommodate the different descriptions used by different papers, both now and in the future.

If you come across a notice which does not clearly fit under one of these headings, please ask via the mailing list.

And - most importantly - remember that any notice published under the "In Memoriam" heading is NOT indexed, under any circumstances.

This page is owned by Ryerson Index Inc, a non-profit organisation incorporated under the laws of New South Wales, Australia. The last update was October 24th, 2010.