How to use PRONI's online catalogue

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (www.nidirect.gov.uk) has uploaded a handy wee video to help explain how to use its online catalogue, one of its greatest research tools. It is available via its YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/SF3uEA_lW8Q and is presented below for convenience.

  

Note that whilst this will allow you to look for items from home prior to a visit to Belfast, the actual catalogue itself looks very different onsite at PRONI - it documents the same records, but is arranged very differently, as you might glimpse from the image below. You will need a member of staff to show you its working on a first visit, as well as a Visitor's Pass to help you order up documents for consultation (see https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/preparing-visit-and-registration).

There are also some digitised materials that can only be viewed on site at PRONI through the catalogue, such as many digitised church records holdings (see https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/publications/proni-guide-church-records).

Increasingly though, some record sets are accessible from home through the catalogue. For details on how to use the recently added Tithe Applotment Books, for example, see my blog post at https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2020/03/pronis-digitised-northern-irish-tithe.html.

Happy hunting!

Chris

My next 5 week Scottish Research Online course starts August 31st - see https://www.pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102. My book Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is now out, also available 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.