Official visit at ScotlandsPeople Centre July 4th

TAFKAM · Post by **TAFKAM** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 7:03 pm

As I said to admin last night Chris, the diary of members of the Royal Household is available for all to see on the Royal website. You can check the diary for any member for any day, within a 2 week rolling period.

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 10:14 pm

I note there is a web site for the centre now:
http://www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk/

Best wishes
Lesley

Chris Paton · Post by **Chris Paton** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 12:30 am

TAFKAM wrote:As I said to admin last night Chris, the diary of members of the Royal Household is available for all to see on the Royal website. You can check the diary for any member for any day, within a 2 week rolling period.

That's useful to know TAFKAM - I've known about the visit for a couple of months, but had been asked to keep hush about it! Ironically, her maj is in Largs the day before - it is front page news here! lol

Chris

Chris Paton · Post by **Chris Paton** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 12:32 am

LesleyB wrote:I note there is a web site for the centre now:
http://www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk/

Best wishes
Lesley

Hi Lesley,

This site has been up and running for quite a while, but if you read the latest minutes from the user group, available on the site, you'll see that they didn't have much money to spend on it to keep us all appraised about what's been happening...! lol

Chris

Chris Paton · Post by **Chris Paton** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:39 am

I had an article published a few months back for one of the genealogy magazines on the new centre, but thought some of it might be of interest to TS readers, so the following is a part of that, for anyone who may still not be aware of what the new SP centre is planning to offer! :

"As well as the digitised births, marriages and deaths images currently available at the GROS, and the census returns, there will be some major new additions. The Public Register of All Arms and Bearings, which depicts every coat of arms granted within the country from 1672 to 1906 (along with many detailed genealogies), has been digitised and indexed, and will be available at the click of a button - that’s about 12,000 entries in total – and users will also be able to view Scottish wills and testaments up to 1901 at their screens.

"Already in the pipeline is the digitisation of the Roman Catholic baptismal and marriage registers, held by the Scottish Catholic Archives, and the indexing of the already digitised 1881 Census and pre-1855 death records held by the GROS, which will be made available towards the end of the year. Further down the road, the digitised Kirk Session Registers, currently available on the first floor of the National Archives building, will also be made available at the same terminals.

"Hosting all of these records is a new computer system which will replace the current DIGROS search system, which will work in a similar way to the external Scotland’s People website. This is currently undergoing final tests. Users will have accounts within which they can save up to 200 images of records, meaning that they can return at any stage to pick up from where they have left off. There will also be a screen providing links to certain external websites such as Find My Past, through which people can access their own accounts, meaning that it will be possible to access additional information that may also help them. Customers will also be able to get black and white paper prints from the statutory, census and OPR records, but will also be offered a facility to save records directly to a USB memory stick, for a pound per image, and to have large colour prints done from the Public Register if one of their ancestors had a personal coat of arms recorded, though this will be at a higher price still to be determined."

NB: I should add, this was published in March, so there may have been some changes since then, but this is the gist of what it is all about!

Chris

Rach · Post by **Rach** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:38 am

Thanks for that, Chris.
I am really looking forward to all that extra information being available and being able to save the information will be a huge bonus.
All of us who are lucky enough to be able to go to Edinburgh are tapping our feet impatiently waiting for it all to be completed. However, it sounds as though it will be well worth the extra wait.
Rae

Chris Paton · Post by **Chris Paton** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:53 am

I know how you feel!

Bear in mind though, Rome wasn't built in a day. If you read the latest minutes from the user group (see bottom of the page at http://www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk/ ), I think it is safe to say there will probably be some initial teething problems. I would imagine demand will be high to start with, and it looks like there might be some messy queuing involved etc. But much as Scotland's People has a long, fine and honourable tradition of letting deadlines slip, it also has an equivalent tradition of being years ahead of the rest of the UK with providing such quality access to records.

Ordinarily I am against state run monopolies, but without it there would be nowhere near as much investment by the government into this sort of thing up here. However, I do wish they would introduce license periods onto the main Scotland's People website instead of the credit based system that they have. Right now £6 will get you 5 digitised records (if you include the search credits needed as well). When you contrast that with £10 a day's unlimited access to double the number of records at the centre, it does seem horribly discriminatory to users unable to visit the centre to see the same records that are available online.

Chris

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:36 pm

hi Chris

Right now £6 will get you 5 digitised records (if you include the search credits needed as well). When you contrast that with £10 a day's unlimited access to double the number of records at the centre, it does seem horribly discriminatory to users unable to visit the centre to see the same records that are available online.

I understand what you mean, but remember that an additional cost may be incurred at NRH if you want a print out of the original at 50p per copy. Not a bad price, but if you require a number of these (which is sometimes what is needed, rather than just jotting down what you find with pencil & notepad) it can really add quite substantially to your total day's cost! Your SP payment online includes a copy of the original document in digital format... and OK, if you print it out, then we get into the additional complicaiton of paper and ink costs...!

Best wishes
Lesley

Chris Paton · Post by **Chris Paton** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:49 pm

Hi Lesley,

A fair point, but bear in mind that despite the fairly good index on SP, you can still end up with the wrong entry, which will have cost £1.20 for the privilege! If you are looking for a John SMITH, you could end up going bankrupt!

I regularly use GROS and usually transcribe the entries I find, unless there is an entry of particular significance or if hard to read. Most people I research for are happy with that, though I do offer them a chance to obtain the originals after, as I note all references.

Also bear in mind that whilst DIGROS images for the OPRs are excellent, many of the statutory images, for technical reasons I won't go into here, remain poor, and GROS has microfilms and microfiche for these as a back up, which I don't think can be printed from (though I am open to correction on that!). There was a desire by GROS to remove the microfiche back up altogether, but they are now keeping it for the present. This is one reason why I always research at GROS as opposed to the Strathclyde Genealogy Centre, for example, which is much closer to me - it has access to the national DIGROS coverage but only to microfiche for the west of Scotland.

I would much prefer SP online follows the model of the Scotsman archive, where you could perhaps pay £10 for the day (as with the new center), for a licensed period of 24 hours, or whatever. At the very least, to have an option if you wish to choose credits or a longer based subscription for a higher fee. Ancestry does this, for example, with its option to pay via subscription or pay-per-view.

Chris

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 7:18 pm

Hi Chris

...with its option to pay via subscription or pay-per-view.

I've often thought that this kind of option would be a good idea. As it stands just now there is no discount for buying multiple credits, which seems a bit daft. The option to pay-as-you-go as we do currently, or to have an option to pay a monthy subscription would be of interest, I'm sure, to lots of folk. I tend to usually be in credit at SP one way or another as my enquiries tend to come in a steady trickle, but to perhaps also offer a one-off fee for 24hrs unlimited access (or perhaps it would need to be limited to a certain number of downloads, as with some of the Ancestry deals, but to work it would need to represent good value) as you have suggested would probably be of interest to some people.

Best wishes
Lesley