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The Newsletter of the Family Records Centre (FRC)
Issue 33 January 2006

Prize Competition
GRO Digitisation Update
What's on at the FRC

Closure Dates

2006
Friday 14 April
Saturday 15 April
Monday 17 April
Monday 1 May
Monday 29 May
Monday 28 August
Monday 25 December & Tuesday 26 December

2007
Monday 1 January

A New Look for the New Year

Welcome to the first edition of a new-look, illustrated Family Record.

We'll still be keeping you up to date with all the latest news from the Family Records Centre, the General Register Office and The National Archives, but now we'll also be bringing you special offers from the FRC bookshop as well as competitions and prizes.

The Family Record is published quarterly and you can subscribe to the printed or the online version free of charge by writing to us at: 1 Myddelton Street, London, EC1R 1UW or by sending an email to: FRC-Newsletter@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

What do all those numbers mean?

As family historians, we often forget that the census returns weren't actually taken for our benefit! One of the main aims of the census was to gather data on employment and industry and in order to do this effectively, the clerks at the General Register Office (GRO) had to categorise our ancestors' occupations. The GRO created a detailed list of occupations called 'Instructions to the Clerks' which the clerks used to assign each occupation to a particular category.

Those of us who have used the census returns extensively will be all too familiar with the annotations and marks made by the clerks in this process. If the occupation didn't fall into an obvious category, the clerks would occasionally add a number - referring directly to the relevant entry in the 'Instructions to the Clerks'.

In the example above the occupation 'Labourer in General Engineering Works' has been assigned to Order 10 (PERSONS WORKING AND DEALING IN METALS, MACHINES, IMPLEMENTS AND CONVEYANCES); Sub-Order 3 (ENGINEERING, AND MACHINE MAKING).

Prize Competition

A copy of Peter Christian's bestselling The Genealogist's Internet is up for grabs in the FRC's first ever prize competition. All you need to do is answer the following question. The International Genealogical Index was the first major family history database to be made available online. But in what year was it launched on the World Wide Web?

1. 1998
2. 1999
3. 2000
4. 2001

Answers by email to: frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk with the word 'Competition' in the subject heading. The closing date for entries is Friday 3 March 2006 - the winner will be announced in the April 2006 issue of the Family Record.

Changes in the first floor reading room

Observant customers will have noticed that 20 new PCs have recently appeared in the first floor reading room next to the existing block of 48.

Over the last 12 months there has been a major shift in the way the majority of customers access our records, especially the census. Most customers now use the online versions rather than the microfilm, so we are gradually replacing microfilm and microfiche readers with PCs. Later this year we will be completely reorganising the enquiry and help desks in the reading room and further developing our online facilities.

Latest Additions to the FRC Library

• Family Skeletons S Fowler & R Paley
• Bound for Botany Bay A Brooke & D Brandon
• Dating 19th Century Photographs R Pols
• Tracing Your Kerry Ancestors M O'Connor
• Tracing Your Dublin Ancestors J G Ryan, B Smith
• Tracing Your Mayo Ancestors B Smith
• Tracing Your Limerick Ancestors M Franklin
• Easy Family History D Annal
• Shot Down and In the Drink G Pitchfork

TNA Newsletter

You can keep up to date with all the latest from The National Archives with a free subscription to TNA's e-Newsletter by following this link: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/enewsletter

Who Do You Think You Are?

The second series of WDYTYA is now well underway and family history is once more in the public eye. Staff from the FRC will be taking part in a special family history day, organised by the BBC, to be held at the British Library on Sunday 12 February.

Death Duty Records Online

You can now search and download selected Death Duty Registers covering the period 1796 to 1811. These relate to probate and administrations granted by the 'country courts', in other words, all courts except the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and are held in record series IR26, pieces 287-437. Details relating to 66,000 named individuals are included. You can search by the name or occupation of the deceased, the parish and county where they lived, and the date of probate. The records are available on the DocumentsOnline website.

You can search the index free of charge and download digital images of the documents for £3.50 each. Downloads are free onsite at the FRC and at The National Archives, Kew.

FRC Open Meeting Tuesday 15 November 2005

The following is a selection of the questions raised by customers at our open meeting on 15 November:

Q. Will the digitised birth, marriage and death indexes be better than the existing paper and microfiche indexes?
A. Yes, the indexes will be created by re-keying from the records themselves, not from the existing indexes. This will enable mistakes and omissions to be corrected. Amendments will also be included. The indexes will be quality assured in accordance with the international standard for data quality.

Q. Why does the GRO not telephone customers when there are queries about requested reference checks? Why are the certificate and the refund posted separately?
A. Unfortunately the volume of requests received prevents us from doing this. The current manual system does not enable the two processes to be combined, but this is likely to be addressed when the new digitised system, which will include a customer database, comes into operation.

Q. Can you explain the process by which church marriages get into the indexes?
A. There are two copies of the register in the church, one of which is sent to the relevant superintendent registrar when full, the other staying in the church. A quarterly copy is sent to the GRO by the church for inclusion in the central records and indexes.

Q. Can anything be done to prevent customers occupying a microfilm reader without taking a seatbox first?
A. We have tried to solve this problem by putting up additional notices and our staff always try to ensure that the seatbox system is explained to new customers. We are considering removing the bookcase of seatboxes and keeping the boxes on the microfilm readers instead.

GRO Service Targets

Performance is monitored against a number of targets on a monthly basis. The following table details GRO performance for the period of October to December 2005. The target set for each area is for 95% of applications to be processed within the set number of days recorded in the table.

The table below gives a breakdown of our performance over the last 3 months in four key areas.

Did you know.

Between 1 January and 31 December 2005, 1,150,411 applications for birth, death and marriage certificates were made online.

Digitisation of Vital Events (DOVE)

The system of civil registration has changed little since it was first introduced in 1837 with the General Register Office (GRO) maintaining a central archive of all births, still-births, deaths and marriages registered in England and Wales. This central archive is formed by collating certified copies of all entries made in registers of births, still-births, marriages and deaths sent to the Registrar General by the local registration service. For many years these certified copies have been microfilmed for the purposes of producing certificates on request. The project known as Digitisation of Vital Events (DOVE) will digitise these records to enable certificates to be supplied more efficiently and provide improved services for customers.

The Partnership

The GRO has entered into partnership with Siemens Business Services to scan, digitise images and data capture an index of all birth, still-birth, death and marriage records from 1837 to the present day.

The Process

The GRO records held on microfilm will be taken to the Siemens Document Scanning Centre in Nottinghamshire and a digital image created in the UK. These images will be encrypted and sent electronically to the Siemens Process Operation in India for data-capture. The original records, which are entries in registers held locally around the country at register offices, and the certified copies that are held by the Registrar General will remain in the UK.

Some fields will be data captured by operators based in India, fully supported by sophisticated computer techniques including character recognition software and look up tables of English and Welsh names and place names. There will be strict security and audit controls built into the process including physical security of data and vetting of staff.

Once these fields and images have been subjected to rigorous data quality and validation checks, the images and data will be returned to the UK for further validation and quality assurance before acceptance testing is undertaken by GRO staff based in Southport.

Once GRO has accepted the digitised records, all images and data records held on off-shore computers will be deleted.

What happens next?

The digitisation of birth and death records will occur throughout 2006/7 with marriage and still-birth records captured in 2007/8. It is anticipated that the project will be completed in the summer of 2008. Regular bulletins on the progress of the digitisation of records will be provided.

The digitised images will change the way the GRO accesses records and produces certificates. This, however, will not change the current processes for ordering certificates from the GRO both during and following the digitisation project.

New Books from The National Archives

Don't miss these forthcoming titles from The National Archives.

The National Archives: A practical guide for family historians - Stella Colwell (£9.99); February 2006 Are you new to The National Archives? Take a guided tour on how to research your family history, including all the new online services.

Smart Family History: Fast Track your family research - Geoff Swinfield (£6.99); February 2006 If you are ready to take searching your family tree further, this is the right guide for you. The latest title in our new family history series.

Tracing the History of your House: A guide to sources (2nd expanded edition) - Nick Barratt (£15.99); February 2006 Who knows what fascinating story is hidden in the history of your house? Use this new, fully updated edition to find out.

The Women's Century: A celebration of changing roles - Mary Turner (£12.99); March 2006 Explore, in this remarkable book, how the roles of women changed more rapidly in the 20th century than ever before.

Tracing your Ancestors: The website and beyond (7th revised edition) - Amanda Bevan (£19.99); March 2006 The must have guide to The National Archives - where the experts go for answers. "If you can't find it in this book, it doesn't exist" Family Tree magazine.

The Chart

What's hot in the FRC Bookshop!

1 The Genealogist's Internet - Peter Christian
2 Easy Family History - David Annal
3 Who Do You Think You Are? - Dan Waddell & Nick Barratt
4 Army Service Records of the First World War - William Spencer
5 Family History on the Web - Stuart Raymond

To win a copy of The Genealogist's Internet, see our prize competition.

All our books are available from the shops at the Family Records Centre and The National Archives, Kew, and from all good bookshops throughout the country. They can also be purchased by telephoning 01904 431213 or online from: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/bookshop.

FRC Extra

The Family Records Centre hosts a full programme of events all year round - we've now brought all these events together in one neat package - welcome to FRC Extra!

Our Tuesday afternoon talks are now an established part of the everyday FRC service. The beginners talks on the first Saturday of every month have proved very popular and last year we added family history surgeries and computer tutorials (see page 7) to our ever-growing list of customer services. We're now working with the Society of Genealogists to deliver an eight-week family history course for beginners (see page 7) and we've got more events in the pipeline - all aimed at helping you to get the best out of your research at the FRC and elsewhere.

SoG at the FRC

The Family Records Centre is now hosting family history courses and tutorials organized by the Society of Genealogists. An eight-week beginners' course entitled 'First Steps in Family History' will begin on 9 May. The sessions will cover the following topics:

• Getting Started
• Births, Marriages and Deaths (2 sessions)
• Census Records
• Church Records (2 sessions)
• Wills
• Other 19th and 20th Century Records

The sessions will be held on Tuesday evenings at the Family Records Centre and will take a practical look at the records and how they can best be used to research your family's history.

For information on how to book a place on the course, and for details of fees etc., please phone the Society's events administrator on 020 7553 3290 or send an email to: events@sog.org.uk.

GRO Online Ordering

Staff at the Family Records Centre will be offering training on using the GRO's Online Ordering Service this March.

The sessions will be held in the Public Search Room on the ground floor on:

• 2 March 2.30 - 4.00
• 2 March 5.30 - 6.30
• 8 March 3.00 - 4.30

Please feel free to drop in and we will be happy to run through the process and answer any questions that may arise. There is no need to book.

Family History Surgeries & Basic Computer Skills Tutorials

We are now taking bookings for Family History Surgeries and Basic Computer Skills Tutorials up until the end of July. The surgeries are designed for those of you who have hit a brick wall with your research. Our expert staff are on hand to help you work your way through your more challenging family history problems. The surgeries take place on Tuesday mornings at the following times: 10:30, 11:00, 12:00 and 12:30.

The computer skills tutorials, aimed at helping beginners to get over their initial fear of using computers, are held on Thursdays at: 11:00, 11:30, 14:00 and 14:30.

Booking a family history surgery or a computer skills tutorial couldn't be easier. You can contact us by phone on 0208 392 5300 or by email: frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Exhibitions

The display area on the first floor of the FRC is home to a highly popular series of family history exhibitions. Charles Dickens will be the subject of our main exhibition this spring but watch out for more fascinating displays over the coming months.

We're Talking To You - in association with Ancestors Magazine

We're pleased to announce another exciting programme of talks for Spring 2006 (Saturday talks in italics):

• 7 Feb - Births, Marriages & Deaths at the FRC
• 14 Feb - British POWs from WW1 & WW2
• 21 Feb - Dr Williams' Library
• 28 Feb - Civil War Records for Family Historians
• 4 Mar - Census Returns Online
• 7 Mar - Family Skeletons
• 14 Mar - Was Your Ancestor a Machine Breaker?
• 21 Mar - Researching Your Irish Ancestors
• 28 Mar - The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• 1 Apr - Family History on the Internet
• 4 Apr - Higher Education Libraries in your Personal Research
• 11 Apr - The Imperial War Museum
• 18 Apr - Sex, Lies & Civil Registration
• 25 Apr - A2A - Access To Archives
• 2 May - Chancery Records
• 6 May - Tracing Your Ancestors at the FRC

Tuesday talks start at 2pm, Saturday talks at 11.30am.

Tickets for all the talks are free and can be collected on the day of the event from the Research Enquiries desk on the first floor. Please note that spaces for the talks are limited. Tickets will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis and cannot be booked in advance.

Further information

If you would like more information about any of the items in this newsletter please telephone us on 0845 603 7788 (GRO enquiries) or 0208 392 5300 (TNA enquiries). You can also email us at:

frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk

or visit our website at:

www.familyrecords.gov.uk/frc

To subscribe to the electronic version of the Family Record please send an email with the word 'Subscribe' in the subject heading to:

FRC-Newsletter@nationalarchives.gov.uk

The Family Record is jointly produced by the General Register Office (GRO) and The National Archives (TNA)