Church records to go online for free

shanew · 01-12-2014 9:11am #1

From John Grenham's Column - Catholic parish registers from the National Library of Ireland

These will be as images, so browsable by date - hopefully indexed by volume and date.

The Kurgan · 01-12-2014 9:51am

Fantastic news , had to do a double take to make sure I hadn't misread it.lets hope its not a never ending story.

KildareFan · 01-12-2014 10:02am

Great news - I've been working my way through my RootsIreland subscription, but feeling frustrated at not being able to see the actual register to check transcriptions as well as details that may not have been transcribed.

pinkypinky · 01-12-2014 10:33am

I'd say Rootsireland will be spitting bricks. Had heard a rumour this was in the pipeline during the summer but didn't hold my breath. And I'll wait to see them online before I get really excited.

Coolnabacky1873 · 01-12-2014 12:49pm

Second what Pinkypinky said.

I had the whole range of emotional reactions: the excitement of the news, the worry of will it actually ever get done, and then the fear of the vested interests such as RootsIreland and the Catholic Church.

If the non-genealogy media pick this up there will be someone, somewhere in the RCC who will be against this.

shanew · 01-12-2014 12:57pm

more info. on this from the NLI press release

pinkypinky · 01-12-2014 1:38pm

I note the press release mentions a fire in the Customs House which destroyed census records. :rolleyes:

shanew · 01-12-2014 2:37pm

pinkypinky wrote: »

I note the press release mentions a fire in the Customs House which destroyed census records. :rolleyes:

that from the head of special collections at NLI no less - oh dear !

Jellybaby1 · 01-12-2014 4:40pm

Coolnabacky1873 wrote: »

........If the non-genealogy media pick this up there will be someone, somewhere in the RCC who will be against this.

Can anyone actually say why anyone in the RCC would be against this. What would their reasoning be? When you think of the irishgenealogy site being online, and the sky hasn't fallen down, what in the name of heaven would they be afraid of?

pinkypinky · 01-12-2014 4:42pm

I think there's far less risk of a backlash on this:

It's all 19th century records, so everyone involved is dead.
They're not transcribed, so the interest to identity thieves will be much lower.
RCC already gave their permission to have microfilms.

Coolnabacky1873 · 01-12-2014 7:37pm

Jellybaby1 wrote: »

Can anyone actually say why anyone in the RCC would be against this. What would their reasoning be? When you think of the irishgenealogy site being online, and the sky hasn't fallen down, what in the name of heaven would they be afraid of?

A tad over dramatic on my part

shanew · 01-12-2014 8:19pm

so when this goes online and settles down - who's in to help create an index by date to help people search ?

L1011 · 01-12-2014 9:02pm

shanew wrote: »

so when this goes online and settles down - who's in to help create an index by date to help people search ?

Ancestry WAK will almost certainly try to get their hands on it I guess; due to the huge value of it for their core target audience - Americans who may have Irish ancestry and their record sets are fairly paltry for here.

However, it'd be an interesting project to try form a FreeBMD like fully open keying project. Who here has experience writing larger scale web apps?

pedroeibar1 · 02-12-2014 12:34am

Jellybaby1 wrote: »

Can anyone actually say why anyone in the RCC would be against this. What would their reasoning be? When you think of the irishgenealogy site being online, and the sky hasn't fallen down, what in the name of heaven would they be afraid of?

I always understood that those chaps believed they had a monopoly on the line to heaven?

Personally, I’m delighted with the news, just put the images up online, no index, leave that bit pay as you look, I’m happy to pore through the pages myself, content in the knowledge that I will not be battling for a working MF reader and trying to correvctly load a film that has been wound and rewound the wrong way several times. Having the doubtful pleasure of giving myself a blinding headache in the comfort of my own home, whenever I like and where I can shout expletives at long-dead sacristans and clerks and their illegible writing instead of having to resort to ineffective silent mutterings into my cupped hand or sleeve. And disappear for a coffee when I want to. The freedom of it. The pleasure of it. Bring it on, I say!

Hermy · 02-12-2014 1:19am

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

...Having the doubtful pleasure of giving myself a blinding headache...

Ah, you got one of those too. And sadly on my first visit it was the only thing I left the Library with!

shanew wrote: »

so when this goes online and settles down - who's in to help create an index by date to help people search ?

When indeed Shane! Hopefully they manage not to follow the lead of their cousins at irishgenealogy.ie and this record set is delivered as promised and on time. And when that happens I'll gladly put my shoulder to the wheel to create an index.

shanew · 02-12-2014 9:01am

Hermy wrote: »

...When indeed Shane! Hopefully they manage not to follow the lead of their cousins at irishgenealogy.ie and this record set is delivered as promised and on time. And when that happens I'll gladly put my shoulder to the wheel to create an index.

I think there will be less complications with this project as it's primarily a straightforward technical operation - admittedly requires some very costly scanners, a few servers with large hard disks etc, but there's far less intervention by people, compared to the labour intensive transcription operation required for the Census or existing parish records

pinkypinky · 02-12-2014 10:24am

I look forward to downloading them all and have a full copy myself to search at my leisure. I downloaded the will calendars (the post-Independence years) as well - big files but worth having for convenience.

On the idea of group transcription: I think the big companies (Ancestry for sure, probably FMP too) will be on that like a hot snot. I also wonder if it will lead to Familysearch releasing them online, since my understanding is that they have digital scans of these already.

I also believe the NLI has the majority of the scanning done, so the 6 months is presumably to get it all shipshape and design a decent website.

montgo · 02-12-2014 12:17pm

This is so exciting especially for those who are not able to visit NLI.

Even though I have been lucky that Ancestry has already digistised some parish records that I am interested in, there are many errors. Who would think that the name Knox could be spelled so many different ways!! Their search engine does not pick up the relevant records.

Any further news on irishgenalogy site?

L1011 · 02-12-2014 1:15pm

montgo wrote: »

Even though I have been lucky that Ancestry has already digistised some parish records that I am interested in, there are many errors. Who would think that the name Knox could be spelled so many different ways!! Their search engine does not pick up the relevant records.

Its 50/50 as to whether those are transcription errors or errors on the original records.

The records Ancestry has are a mix of ones from Family Search - not sure where they got the transcriptions from - and ones from a commercial company that sells electronic parish register systems to dioceses which mean they're transcribed by church staff and should at least have SOME quality control to them as a result.

montgo · 02-12-2014 1:23pm

L1011 wrote: »

Its 50/50 as to whether those are transcription errors or errors on the original records.

The records in question were scanned from the original Parish Register. So luckily I was able to look at every page of the register until I found the missing records.

P. Breathnach · 05-12-2014 2:05am

There is an index to the records. I understand that most of the work was done by workers on FÁS Community Employment schemes. The quality is mixed but, in my opinion, moderately good.

Most of the index is controlled by the IFHF and can be accessed on rootsireland.ie. That is an operation that many of us have problems with. The IFHF takes about €1m a year from people doing genealogy.

I have Kerry ancestors. It's a joy (and occasionally an irritation) to search through church records f.o.c. on irishgenealogy.ie.

It strikes me as wrong that people should feel a need to start again from scratch.

pinkypinky · 05-12-2014 10:30am

Personally, I don't mind paying if the work is good quality, but I think everyone feels hard done by with the mercenary tactics of Rootsireland. The new model is better than the old but it's still too costly. If I were new to family history, I'd get my money's worth for one month but when you've already done a lot, it drives up the cost.

Rootsireland will still have its place even when the parish register images are online: if you don't know where the ancestors where, you still need a computer to do the lion's share of the searching, even though their search engine employs tedious cutoffs.

But consider a genealogy world where we already have multiple locations offering us the same material (2 lots of Griffiths on 5 different sites, etc). With the parish records, I see it only as an advantage to have eyes on the digital images as well as transcriptions.

KildareFan · 05-12-2014 3:51pm

Hi all - I can't wait to be able to see the actual registers.

The RootsIreland subscription for 25euro for one month is reasonably good value for me since I've been able to track down a lot of families and eliminated shoals of red herrings. I couldn't have afforded to take the risk when RootsIreland was charging a fiver per view.

However, transcription mistakes are a major problem. It looks like some of the transcribers were not familiar with local family names or placenames and produced gobbledygook instead.

As for dates - one family member who I know for a fact was born in 1916, because I was at his 70th birthday party - according to Rootsireland, was baptised in 1816.

P. Breathnach · 05-12-2014 4:33pm

KildareFan wrote: »

...
However, transcription mistakes are a major problem. It looks like some of the transcribers were not familiar with local family names or placenames and produced gobbledygook instead...

I am sure that there are some transcription errors, but many of the variant spellings of family names or placenames are not. That's how they were actually recorded at a time when spellings were not standardised, and where the priest in the parish might not have known all the families well.

It's particularly challenging in Gaeltacht areas, where there was an extra degree of complication in anglicising names. I counted the number of variant spellings of one ancestral townland in the Kerry gaeltacht, and found more than 20 - not one of which was the official English name. Even today, the people who live there don't use the official English name.

contrary · 06-12-2014 9:44am

KildareFan wrote: »

Hi all - I can't wait to be able to see the actual registers.

As for dates - one family member who I know for a fact was born in 1916, because I was at his 70th birthday party - according to Rootsireland, was baptised in 1816.

I don't think Rootsireland claim to hold many records from 1900

pinkypinky · 06-12-2014 11:32am

They definitely have up to 1910 for some parishes, which gives them an edge on marriages over the NLI records, once online.

pinkypinky · 06-01-2015 9:48am

Paul Gorry, prominent member of APGI has posted on facebook about this today.

https://m.facebook.com/PaulGorryMAPGI/posts/485650954909176

He makes some interesting points.

L1011 · 06-01-2015 9:56am

Seems rather defensive of the IFHFs former price-gouging policy more than anything else to me. What they've become now is near to the acceptable price (for a site with a now crippled search and no tree functionality, at least).

KildareFan · 06-01-2015 10:20am

contrary wrote: »

I don't think Rootsireland claim to hold many records from 1900

Hi just noticed this - RootsIreland have Co Waterford baptisms up to 1920; I downloaded the record for an aunt in law, born 1920. She died in the 1990s and I knew her well.

Hermy · 06-01-2015 12:29pm

It seems that maybe Paul's issues go beyond the mere uploading of church records and have more to do with his own dissatisfaction with the way the National Library conducts its affairs.

shanew · 06-01-2015 1:01pm

I suspect that many of the people looking forward to this, outside Ireland especially, dont quite get the exact nature of these records - images of the registers, not searchable by names or keywords, and limited details on early records. Many of the online queries I see dont have a detailed location or parish, so I suspect some may have long searches ahead of them

On a limited budget I think this is a fair fall-back option, and gives people outside Dublin, or Ireland a chance to search records, already available in Kildare St, for themselves.. or people in Dublin who prefer to search from home ...

Church records to go online for free

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