Saturday 11 July 2009

Ulster Historical Foundation website problems

The following comes from the Ulster Historical Foundation:

Our new website went live on 10 July 2009. Currently we are experiencing some 'teething' problems with various areas of the website. We trust that you will bear with us as we make the necessary changes which will allow us to improve the functionality of the site.

Unfortunately some sections of the website cannot be accessed for the next few days, so you may experience some problems with the site. We assure you that we will be working on resolving these issues and we expect the website will be fully working soon. If you wish to report any problems please send your email to david.graham@uhf.org.uk

With our apologies for any disruption.

Ulster Historical Foundation



The site at www.ancestryireland.com has recently had a redesign, buit I'm unclear as yet as to whether its functionality has changed in any way. I did recently get an e-mail from them on June 23rd announcing that back issues of its Familia publication would be available online at the site, and also the following:

...there will also be 30,000 baptisms from the Church Of Ireland in Co Antrim coming on line in the next 2 weeks, which you can view by buying credits.(Full Guild Members get 50% discount) and you can also buy in bulk now.


It should be noted that the UHF also makes its records for Antrim and Down available at the Irish Family History Foundation site at www.irish-roots.ie. However the site offers considerably more records for each county on the IFHF site, so whether these Church of Ireland baptisms from Antrim are new records or just simply records that it already makes available at the IFHF site is not at all clear.


Hopefully this will be clarified in due course, but it is a very confusing way for a supplier to make its records available to the public! This is further compounded by the fact that the BMD records are actually offered at two different rates north and south of the border, and whilst it still charges an extremely high price for its records, the exchange rate means that it is now in fact cheaper to purchase records through the UHF site. The down side remains that there are considerably fewer records available from the UHF site, and so for some time I have been advising people to do the free search through the IFHF site (which has a better search interface), and if you come up trumps and can narrow down the right record, to then purchase it at the UHF site. It's not ideal, but it does work!

On the plus side, the UHF does have additional databases, unique to the organsiation, which can be accessed if you join their guild at £30 a year.


Chris

www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
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