Wednesday 5 September 2012

Fate of Cork City's Catholic registers still undecided?

The saga of finding a permanent online home for Cork City's Catholic registers continues.

After an 18-year wait, the register records were thought to have been handed over (in transcribed and indexed format, I believe) by Cork County Council to the Irish Family History Foundation in early July for upload to the pay-per-view RootsIreland.ie database (news story here).

Since then, nada. A release of records from the IFHF for County Cork over the weekend just gone didn't include the Cork City records and there was no word on their likely addition to the site. This silence wasn't exactly unexpected, and July is not so long ago, anyway.

But last night's news from Cork-based genealogist Margaret Jordan, who has lobbied on behalf of researchers to get these records released, has come as a bit of a surprise. It seems discussions are still continuing between the Cork Diocesan Office and the NLI/Dept of Heritage, Arts & the Gaeltacht (the state-department responsible for the free to access irishgenealogy.ie database) as to where these records might permanently reside for access by researchers. The hope that they might eventually appear on irishgenealogy.ie is reignited!

You can read excerpts from the Diocesan Office's reply on Margaret's blog here.