The Newsletter of the Family Records Centre (FRC) - Issue 18 Spring 2002 (5th online edition)

General News From The FRC

Closure Dates in 2002

Monday 6 May (May Bank Holiday)
Monday 3 to Tuesday 4 June (Jubilee Holiday)
Monday 26 August (August Bank Holiday)
Wednesday 25 to Saturday 28 December
(Christmas)

We're talking to you!

We're pleased to be able to announce the full timetable for the talks at the FRC this summer. This year we are looking at some less commonly used sources to give you some ideas for further areas of research. The series will end with a talk on 6 August from David Hey, the author of the recently published book 'How Our Ancestors Lived''. David will also be signing copies of his book in the FRC entrance lobby before and after the talk.

Here are the dates for your diary -

11 June Tracing Your Ancestors at the FRC
18 June The British Isles Vital Records Index
25 June Wills and Death Duty Records
2 July Army Officers
9 July Newspapers
16 July Internet Databases
23 July What's Been Done Before?
30 July Divorce Records
6 August How Our Ancestors Lived

The talks will take place at 2.00pm in the FRC Meetings Room on the first floor and will last for roughly an hour. Entry is free and tickets will be issued from the New Customers Desk on the first floor on the day of the talk. No advance bookings will be taken.

FRC Open Morning

A reminder that on Saturday 18 May at 9.00am we will be holding an Open Morning at the FRC. This is an opportunity to talk to managers and staff about the service we provide and receive updates on recent developments. Access to both the ground and first floors will not be possible until 9.30am. Refreshments will be offered.
What's new in the FRC Bookshop?

Stella Colwell's The Family Records Centre: A User's Guide (price £7.99 - US $12.95) takes you on a guided tour of the FRC from the entrance of the building, showing you where to locate the records and how to interpret them. Research tips are given as well as advice on next steps if you reach a dead end, while worked case studies show how to follow the trail and produce a family tree summarizing each discovery.

Also available in the PRO's best-selling Pocket Guide series are new editions of Using Birth, Marriage and Death Records and Using Census Returns (price £3.99 each - US $5.95). Visit our Internet bookshop for more information on the full range of Public Record Office publications and other titles selected to help you with your research. You can even order online at www.pro.gov.uk/bookshop.

Family History Fairs

The FRC and/or the GRO will be attending the following Family History Fairs this year:

Society of Genealogists Family History Fair
Saturday 4 & Sunday 5 May (10.00am to 5.00pm)
Royal Horticultural Society New Hall,
Greycoat Street, Westminster, London

Yorkshire Family History Fair
Saturday 29 June (10.00am to 4.30pm)
Knavesmire Exhibition Centre, York Racecourse

North Wales Family History Fair
Saturday 7 September (10.00am to 4.30pm) Llandudno Conference Centre

Hampshire Genealogical Society Open Day
Sunday 22 September (10.00am to 4.00pm)
Horndean Community School, Barton Hall, Horndean

North West Group Family History Fair
Sunday 27 October (10.30am to 4.30pm)
Manchester Town Hall

We hope to see as many of you as possible at these events.

Certificate Turnaround Times

Customers are asked to note that certificates applied for on Saturday at the FRC will be issued the following Friday. This is the same level of service as applications made on a Monday. This is because Saturday is not included as a working day within our targets for certificate turnaround.

Lewis Carroll Exhibition

Following on from the FRC's successful exhibitions on Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale we're pleased to announce the third in the series, featuring the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. The exhibition will feature certificates, census returns, wills and other important family history sources - all relating to Lewis Carroll and his family.

News From The GRO

All change at the GRO

After 2½ years at the helm of Certificate Services Southport and the Family Records Centre, Head of Branch, Gwyn Hughes is about to move to a new post. You can find out more about his successor Margaret Harris below.

Gwyn says "I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as Head of Certificate Services, and my involvement with the genealogical community. In particular I'm pleased to have had the opportunity to contribute to improving the service provided by GRO, and in this respect hopefully going some way to meeting the expectations of family historians."

Gwyn's next posting is to lead the implementation phase of the Registration Review. This will involve working closely with Kieron Mahony who has responsibility for policy and legislation and with Duncan Lockyer who is in the lead on Infrastructure Development.

In his new role Gwyn will ensure that family historians and the genealogical community are kept fully informed of the developments and changes that come about as a direct result of the Registration Review as they materialise over the next few years.

Gwyn isn't the only senior member of staff to be leaving the area. Carol Clarke, who was with Certificate Services from 1995, firstly as Operations Manager and then more recently as Communications and Public Relations Manager, has recently left the Branch to take up a post in Facilities Management (vacated by the incoming Branch Head - Margaret Harris!).

Carol says of her time spent in the area "I am extremely sad to be leaving Certificates Services, particularly the staff and those customers with whom I've built up a rapport over the past 7 years. I wish the Branch continued success and I know that with the dedication of the staff concerned, this will be achieved".

Although Carol has left the branch she will continue to have connections with the Family Records Centre as part of her new role within the Facilities Management Unit.

New GRO Head of Branch

Certificate Services welcomes Margaret Harris as the new Head of Branch.

Margaret joined Certificate Services Branch at the beginning of April 2002. She started her working life in OPCS London, in Internal Audit before moving to Social Survey Division where she was responsible for Interviewer Training.

A change in location meant that she transferred to the Employment Department spending time on secondment with North Derbyshire Training and Enterprise Council (NDTEC).

During her years with the Employment Department and TEC Margaret held a variety of posts including Business Development Manager and Marketing Manager, Financial Controls Manager and Contract Manager.

In 1993 Margaret transferred to the Southport office. Since then she has spent most of her working life in the Facilities Management (FM) Area where she has been involved in the outsourcing of FM work and latterly managing the transition to the outsourced FM company.

(Meet more GRO/PRO managers in the July 2002 edition of the Family Record)

New Tills at the FRC

New computerised, touch-screen tills were installed in the Public Search Room on Tuesday 26 March.

There have been a few teething problems but the tills are now fully operational. We should like to thank our customers for their patience during the installation. The tills operate in a similar way to the cash registers previously used, but the receipts produced have a slightly different layout.

GRO continues to meet its Service Targets for Certificate Production

Demand for certificates continued at a high level throughout the financial year ending in March 2002 with almost ¾ million applications received either via the FRC or direct to GRO Southport.

Overall GRO's published targets were met in 98% of applications. This compares with 76% for the previous financial year.

97% of "post out" applications made at the FRC were dispatched on time, with 99.9% of FRC "collect" cases available on time. 97% of Quoted Reference applications made direct to Southport were also dealt with on time, as were 99% of applications made for certificates for family history and administrative purposes.

Please note: service delivery target times do not include bank holidays or weekends.

News From The PRO

Customer Survey, March 2002.

In March we carried out a customer satisfaction survey of visitors to the Census and Wills Reading Room. A number of forms included comments on particular issues. Below are responses to a number of the issues raised. Some of these will be familiar to those who have been readers of this newsletter for some time, but are included to inform newer readers.

'Moving things around'

We only make changes to the layout when we are trying to implement an improvement to the service, or where circumstances force us to make a change. The last re-arrangement was in November, and affected principally the surname index area and Area A, in anticipation of the 1901 service. The changes were publicised in the October edition of Family Record.

'Old films'

We are aware that some of our films are quite worn, and for earlier material, such as the 1841 census, the condition of the original documents causes poor images.

However, we have received a new print of the 1861 census for London, and we will very shortly be receiving a new copy of the films for the 1841 and 1851 census returns. It is also intended to produce new masters of the films for 1841 and 1851, although the condition of the documents does create a number of technical challenges, so the work will take a considerable time.

'Old film readers', 'not enough motorised readers'

A number of our microfilm viewers are now quite long in the tooth, but on the whole they are still perfectly serviceable, albeit they are not motorised. We did increase the number of motorised readers last year, thanks to successfully arguing for new special needs machines. We would like to further increase the number of motorised readers, but they are expensive and we have to bid for a share of the limited funds available for such purchases. Interestingly, we received one comment against motorised readers, due to their size and the amount of noise they make.

'Post 1943 wills'

Unfortunately the fiche index that is available only covers the period up to 1943. Not only is the later period not available, but also replacement fiche for those lost or stolen from our set are not available either.

'All like 1881'

Whilst we agree with this wish, those involved with that project will be aware of the amount of effort involved. We have seen an even greater interest in the 1881 index since we converted from CD access to a network (the Family History Databases). We are continuing to expand our collection of census surname indexes, and a number of CD-ROM's for certain counties for 1851 will shortly be added to the network, following successful trials on our Miscellaneous Family History CD's machine.

'Inductions please'

Unfortunately inductions would overstretch our limited staff resources, however we do produce two useful leaflets to assist in this area. The first is 'First Visit', which is available from Reception and outlines what is available on each floor of the FRC. The second is 'How to Use the Census and Wills Reading Room'. This new leaflet was introduced in December, and details the main resources available on the first floor, and also includes instructions on how to use the film and fiche readers, where to find a black box, etc. This leaflet is available from the leaflet carousel opposite the New Customers Desk.

'Divorce records availability'

Having successfully made available microfilms of PRO series J78, the indexes to divorce files held in J77 at Kew, we have received more enquiries about more recent divorce material.

As far as we know, the only method of accessing modern divorce records is by contacting the Divorce Registry at First Avenue House. There are unfortunately no other indexes available for these records.

'More printers'

The number of film and fiche printers was increased about 2 years ago to the present total of ten. This appears to be sufficient at all but the busiest times. These machines are very expensive to purchase and maintain, so we could not justify purchasing more at the present time.

1901 census - no film or fiche at FRC

We recognise that not having the 1901 census available at FRC while the online service is unavailable is inconvenient and frustrating for our users. However, those with long memories will recall that one of the original reasons for starting the 1901 project was the fact that the FRC would not be able to cope with another census due to the limited space available, increasing numbers of users, and the expected high demand for the records.

This reason still holds true. The methodology for calculating the size of 1901 service at FRC (online access) and Kew (fiche access) has been shown to be accurate, as both services (when the online was available) were very busy but not overwhelmed. The same methodology, when used to calculate the necessary size of an FRC fiche service, resulted in a service that was much too big for the FRC to accommodate.

Hence the decision not to make available the fiche at FRC. It should also be noted that the 1901 dedicated FRC space would not be large enough to house an equivalent sized fiche service, because of the space needed to accommodate bookcases and finding aids, consultation desks or lecterns, fiche printers, etc.

We also received some general FRC related comments in the survey

Car parking

The FRC has 3 car park spaces available for orange badge holders to book in advance. These are the only car parking spaces available at the FRC, and so we cannot offer parking to anyone else.

Vending & catering

We have experienced a number of difficulties in this area in recent months. However, all the vending machines are in the process of being replaced. Also, the frequency of replenishment for the snacks and drinks machines has been increased

Congestion on the ground floor, 'more bmd indexes'

The Public Search room was re-arranged in December to increase the space around the most popular indexes, and to create space for additional indexes, as they are made available. Users are reminded that a fiche copy of the indexes is also available from the Customer Service Desk.

Toilets, etc.

We have been experiencing problems over a number of months with regard to toilets. We are in constant contact with out Facilities Management contractors to ensure that cleaning is to the required standard. We would ask that users notify the Security staff at the Reception desk if they find any of the toilets or similar facilities in an unsatisfactory state.

Refreshment Area Congestion, Lockers

At peak times the refreshment area does become very busy. Unfortunately there is no scope for expansion, and as the tables are not very old, we could not justify replacing them for more space efficient ones (square or rectangular ones have been suggested). If however the situation does become worse, we will review the situation.

Similarly, there is no space to expand the locker area, nor is there space within to install more lockers. The current lockers are generally in a good state of repair, although we are affected by a number of inconsiderate users who choose not to return the key, and some that choose to vandalise the lockers.

Our Facilities Management contractors attempt to keep as many lockers as possible in operation, but repairs and replacement keys are not cheap. We would ask that users refrain from behaving in a way that prevents others from making use of a locker.

Further information

If you would like more information about any of the items in this newsletter please telephone

020 8392 5300 or visit our website at:

www.familyrecords.gov.uk/frc/

To subscribe to the electronic version of the Family Record please send an email to:

FRC-Newsletter@pro.gov.uk

with the word 'Subscribe' in the subject heading.

The Family Record is jointly produced by the General Register Office (GRO) and the Public Record Office (PRO).