Monday 28 February 2011

WDYTYA - some news!

A few snippets of Scottish and other news from Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2011:

* The merged body established by the merger of the General Register Office for Scotland and the National Archives of Scotland is to be known formally as the National Records of Scotland.

* FindmyPast (
www.findmypast.co.uk) will be launching the 1841-1901 Scottish censuses on its site this year - but in transcript form only. There is also a whole rake of Irish material to be going online, and more military material.

* The images from Scottish Monumental Inscriptions (www.scottish-monumental-inscriptions.com)impressive collection of graveyard CDs are now hosted online at Deceased Online (
www.deceasedonline.com), and new additions will be added regularly - you can buy an entire CD of images or a dataset per surname (per CD). The new addition to the site is very much still being developed, but it is online now.

* Records from the British Library's India Office collection are to be digitised.

* The Genealogist (
www.thegenealogist.co.uk) is adding a new war memorials project to its site imminently

* News from the Association of Genealogists and Record Agents (AGRA) coming soon, so keep an eye on its site at
www.agra.org.uk.

* A new FamilySearch course is to be launched by Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd (
www.pharostutors.com).

* A new masters based genealogical course from the University of Dundee has been launched.

* More pre-1858 Name Search records to be added to the PRONI website (
www.proni.gov.uk) soon.

* Who Do You Think You Are? Live is now run by the BBC - next year's show is likely to see some themed elements, such as Sport (because of the Olympics) and Transport (because of err... Top Gear?!). Family history stalls will apparently be getting more room to exhibit.

I've interviewed several people and will let them speak for themselves over the next few days about these and other developments...!

Chris


www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
Professional genealogical problem solving and research
http://twitter.com/ChrisMPaton
Researching Scottish Family History (New book)

Tracing Your Family History on the Internet (Even newer book!)

4 comments:

  1. Thats great news about Find My Past obtaining the Scottish Census's. Ancestry has had the monopoly too long for people doing Scottish research.

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  2. It is great about FMP obtaining the records, but Ancestry doesn't have a monopoly on them - only ScotlandsPeople has the images online! It could be argued that Ancestry's transcriptions helped to break a monopoly - as did those of FreeCEN, Maxwell Ancestry and others who offer Scottish census records online.

    Chris

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  3. Sorry Chris, monopoly was the wrong word. Meant that ancestry is the only site to offer all the Scottish Census's as a subscription service. I use Scotlands People a lot (scared to add up my total spend!)but find it expensive for census's, especially if it is a common surname you are looking for. I have ancestors spread over England and Scotland so may think about subscribing to Find My Past in the future.

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  4. I think you're the very customer FMP is aiming for Susan! On the plus side, the transcriptions will hopefully be better, and hopefully FMP will also index ability to speak Gaelic (from 1891) and marital status, which Ancestry doesn't do sadly.

    Chris

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