Wednesday 18 August 2021

National Records of Scotland may extend visitor access in September

I missed this development last Thursday 12th - the National Records of Scotland has updated its Coronavirus Information page at www.nrscotland.gov.uk/about-us/service-status with the following information:

NRS is committed to extending on-site access to other customer groups in the coming months. A review of our current access arrangements will be undertaken in August 2021, with a plan to extend access to additional customer groups where possible during September 2021. This review will take into consideration levels of demand, search room capacity and the Scottish Government announcement in relation to the move to beyond Level 0 and changes to physical distancing. The two metre distancing measures will remain in place in NRS buildings for the time being to ensure the safety of our staff, customers and other visitors.

At present there is a limited access to the ScotlandsPeople Centre with four hour slots available to professional genealogists, whilst the NRS's Historic Search Room, the facility for which has been temporarily moved to the ground floor because the search room itself cannot be made Covid compliant, is only available for academic access. Neither PRONI or TNA, the other national archives in the UK, have placed such elitist restrictions on their services; I'm sure that many frustrated users of the NRS will feel that the sooner that access is restored again for the benefit of all, the better. 

(With thanks to @mishjholman)

Chris

Just out, Sharing Your Family History Online is on sale at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

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