Doing the Internet Right: The General Register Office of Scotland
By Mark HowellsAn exemplary Web site explored
Does the name Alexander Graham ring a bell?
One of Scotland’s native sons invented the telephone (which was followed shortly thereafter, unfortunately, by the invention of the telephone bill). The phone system created by Alexander Graham Bell in the last century remains the fundamental framework over which the Internet is interconnecting so many of us into the next century. The Scots are continuing their tradition of technical leadership with an impressive new Internet resource of particular interest to family historians.
Even if we are not all blessed with Scottish ancestry, this new Internet resource should be of interest to us. This article will highlight a great example of how Internet technology can provide a powerful tool for family history research. By showing how a record repository can effectively provide record-index searching and record-ordering services over the Internet, Scotland has produced a first-class model for other repositories around the globe to study and emulate.
Scots Origins
The General Register Office for Scotland-the GRO(S)-is the UK governmental department responsible for the registration of births, marriages, and deaths in Scotland. It is also responsible for the decennial censuses of Scotland’s population. The GRO(S) is charged with providing access to public records about individuals. In its capacity as a repository of public records, the GRO(S) has launched its online Scots Origins service, located at http://www.origins.net/GRO/.
Scots Origins is an easy-to-use, online, pay-per-view database which provides index information to over 25 million records of births, christenings, marriages, and deaths in Scotland. As an index, it provides references to original records rather than the original records themselves. Make no mistake, this service is not free. Visitors first provide credit card details by entering them on a Web page form. The credit card information is secured from fraudulent misuse through the application of encryption to secure the transaction. A standard fee of £6 is charged against the visitor’s credit card for the first thirty pages of index data returned.
Scots Origins is a fine example of how co-operation between a government record repository and a commercial company can successfully bring genealogical resources to the Internet. Scots Origins resulted from a partnership formed between GRO(S) and OMS Services Ltd., an electronic commerce consulting company, to develop and operate Scots Origins.
To use the service, a visitor enters a surname of interest with additional search parameters to begin a search of the index database. Scots Origins then returns the number of “hits” or records which match that search criteria. The visitor may then choose to view the results of the search. A visitor is only charged if he or she does, in fact, view the results of the search. Search parameters can include:
The index information returned consists of a summary of the events which generated a match of the search criteria entered. An example of a search result is shown below. Of course, the index information returned by Scots Origins is only a tantalizing clue to the actual records themselves. By using the Order button, the visitor can actually order an extract copy of the original record for an additional £10 charge per record. Extracts are the same as those traditionally provided by the GRO(S) when ordered via postal mail or in person at New Register House in Edinburgh. The record extracts ordered from Scots Origins are delivered by postal mail. Examples of extracts obtainable through Scots Origins (some using famous Scotsmen as examples) may be viewed at http://www.origins.net/GRO/extracts.html.
In order to explore Scots Origins, I searched for my great-great-grandfather John Aris’s christening record from 1843 and got the match shown in the illustration.
My great-great-grandfather’s date of christening is given, along with his father’s name and his mother’s maiden name. Scrolling to the right on the screen shown in the illustration shows that the parish given for this christening was South Leith, near Edinburgh. Armed with this information, I obtained a copy of his christening record using more time-consuming (yet less expensive) methods.
By visiting my local family history center, I determined which years of parish registers for South Leith had been microfilmed. I was able to obtain a copy of John Aris’s christening record by ordering microfilms of the South Leith parish registers from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Although I used other research methods to obtain my great-great-grandfather’s original record, the record-extract ordering system offered by Scots Origins is far and away the fastest and most direct method of obtaining extracts of the records which it indexes.
The Scots Origins site is extremely easy to use. An excellent site demo is provided off the main page. This demonstration carefully walks a visitor through the payment, searching, and ordering process so that one knows what to expect before spending any pounds sterling. The Frequently Asked Questions page is also extremely useful for understanding Scots Origins before using it.
Where Did It All Come From?
As with any computerized database encountered in our genealogical research, we always wish to know the original source of the extracted data. Comprising over 25 million records, the Scots Origins database has been extracted from several significant sources.
The GRO(S) began computerizing its index to the Statutory Registers (registers of births, marriages, and deaths) in 1989, and that portion of the Scots Origins database has been accessible on an internal GRO(S) system since then. To avoid raising concerns about Internet access to the records of living persons, only the indexes to statutory records which are over one hundred years old are made available on Scots Origins. Therefore, the index to birth, marriage, and death records covers the period 1855 (the first year of civil registration in Scotland) to 1897. These records comprise over 11 million individual index entries. This indexing process was done by the GRO(S) and a commercial data-entry service.
Scots Origins also includes over 9 million index entries from what are known as the Old Parish Registers. These are index entries from those of the Church of Scotland’s local parish records which were extant in 1854 and were, by law, deposited at the GRO(S). These records include christenings, banns, and marriages from all over Scotland for the years 1553 to 1854. Researchers with Scots ancestry will be familiar with the Scottish Church Records CD-ROM available at their local family history centers. The extraction effort by the Genealogical Society of Utah which produced that CD-ROM is also the source of the Old Parish Register index on Scots Origins. It is interesting to note, however, that the two databases are not identical. The Scottish Church Records CD-ROM contains information from parishes which were not part of the established church, while Scots Origins has extracts only from the Church of Scotland. In addition, since Scots Origins is a “living” database, it receives regular updates and error corrections. Such updates are not possible with a pre-pressed CD-ROM such as Scottish Church Records. Be sure to consult both resources for the widest possible research coverage. As records of burials from the Old Parish Records were not originally indexed, the Scottish Association of Family History Societies now has a project underway to rectify this omission.
Finally, Scots Origins will include the over 4 million index records from the 1891 census for Scotland by the end of this year. The indexing of these census index records was done by the GRO(S).
It Just Keeps Growing
One of the strengths of an online database is its ability to be updated with relative ease. Plans are already underway to add the nearly 4 million index records from the 1881 census to the Scots Origins database. These census records were indexed as part of the joint project by the Genealogical Society of Utah and local UK family history societies to create a complete index to the 1881 census.
As mentioned previously, only those statutory records which are over one hundred years old are included in the Scots Origins database. However, as each current year passes, another year’s worth of births, marriages, and deaths will be added to Scots Origins from one hundred years past. (For example, next year the statutory records from the year 1898 will become searchable as part of Scots Origins.) With the annual release of additional material and the ongoing process of correcting errors and omissions found in the database, Scots Origins will continue to grow and improve as a research tool.
Doing the Internet Right
The General Register Office for Scotland began its computerization of the index records in its keeping long before the popularization of the Internet. Over nearly a decade, through the creative use of partnerships with genealogical societies and commercial enterprises, the GRO(S) has made good on its head start by creating or acquiring more computerized indexes of its holdings. The Scots Origins Web site is the next logical step in their ongoing computerization program. By providing pay-per-view index searching and record-extract ordering securely over the Internet, the GRO(S) leads the world in providing online access to their patrons. The GRO(S) didn’t build a database specifically for the Internet. Rather, they took the results of their previous efforts and made them the building blocks of an Internet service. Now that’s doing the Internet right.
Mr. Bell would be proud.
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