SCAN website to be killed off on January 9th 2025

The end is nigh for the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) website at www.scan.org.uk, which has been replaced by the new Your Scottish Archives platform (see https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2024/12/your-scottish-archive-catalogue-launches.html). The following announcement is currently being carried at the top of the SCAN platform, which for twenty years has provided a catalogue detailing holdings in over fifty archives across Scotland:

Please be aware that from 9 January 2025 this website, The Scottish Archive Network, will be decommissioned.

The SCAN website will have had its final web archive completed and all the content, apart from access to the Highlands and Islands Emigration records, will be available via National Records of Scotland Web archive.
 
The Highland and Island Emigration records database (HD4/5) is already available to search for free on the Scotland's People website.  Researchers just need to register for a free account in order to search it.

There is also a supporting record guide for researchers which provides background information and explains how to search the database at the Scotland's People help and support guides.

RIP SCAN...

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

Your Scottish Archive catalogue launches

Although I am still down under in Australia, this is too big a development to wait to talk about until I get home! 

The new Your Scottish Archives site has finally launched, after an extensive delay, at https://yourscottisharchives.com. Designed to replace the long out-of-date Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) platform, the site offers a catalogue of many archival institutions in Scotland, including county archive services, and for the first time, community based archives. In addition, the site has an updated Knowledge Base and Glossary, features previously available on the SCAN platform. 

This is probably the most significant development in Scottish genealogy for a decade, with the platform able to assist family historians to locate many collections that can assist with research. Please note that this is not a straight migration of participating organsiations from the SCAN platform, however, so there may be organisations that were represented there now not on the new Your Scottish Archive platform, so do always remember to consult websites of Scottish archives also, in case they have their own dedicated catalogues there.

Happy hunting - and I will carry out a fuller review when I get home!

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

SCAN to be replaced by new Your Scottish Archives platform

Following my post yesterday about the disappearance of the Scottish Archives Network (SCAN) website, which appears to have happened because the domain registration has not been renewed (see http://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2021/11/scan-website-down-but-catalogue-still.html), I asked the Scottish Council on Archives (www.scottisharchives.org.uk) for a comment. They have responded as follows:

We are not aware of any plans to make SCAN inaccessible currently - we will do a bit of investigating. The development of the new portal is well underway with content planned to be transferred from SCAN next year. A fuller update can be found here: https://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/latest/news/new-archives-portal-announced/

The SCA's announcement of a replacement for SCAN, to be called Your Scottish Archives, is one that I missed last year. The report linked to above notes that "SCA plans to launch the new Your Scottish Archives towards the end of 2022. The project has been delayed by the pandemic and lockdowns but we are back on track. We will be contacting repositories in early 2022 to start the process of collecting data."

In the meantime, I have also asked the National Records of Scotland if it can redirect users of its catalogues page at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/catalogues-and-indexes to the SCAN catalogue link at https://catalogue.nrscotland.gov.uk/scancatalogue/search.aspx rather than to the currently non-working www.scan.org.uk domain, if there is a problem in renewing its registration. (I can't imagine a reason for this not to be possible.)

(With thanks to the SCA via Twitter at @ScotsArchives)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.