Soundex is an option that is available on many of the indexing systems in use in Ohio, but it has not been activated.  In other words, someone decided that it was a better idea not to allow searchers to use the feature - for liability reasons, of course.  I spoke with representatives from two of the most prominent computer indexing systems used in Ohio and I was told that they, or the counties, were afraid that people, not understanding what it was, would get incorrect results on their searches.

Personally, I would rather have the option.  Without such a feature, it is incumbent on the searcher to creatively anticipate how someone may have misspelled a name.  Of course, I'm not sure how accurate Soundex would be, either.  Relying on it may prove to be even more costly if it doesn't return all relevant results as one might expect.

Best,
Robert A. Franco
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