Thursday 20 March 2014

We're down to weeks, rather than months

Here's an update and round-up of the much anticipated record collections working their way onto the online environment in the next month or so.

General Register Office of Northern Ireland's bmd facility:
No change to previous advice (see blogpost) that GRONI's new pay-to-view system will be 'soft launched' on Monday 31 March to researchers using GRONI's public search room in Belfast. All being well, the new system will hit the Internet a couple of weeks later.

National Archives of Ireland's Census Fragments and Census Search Forms
: The test site is now operating but is still being tweaked. Catriona Crowe is writing the explanatory text and expects these two collections to be live on the free NAI Genealogy site in a matter of weeks. My impression is that these record sets could see an Easter delivery, but that's me talking, nothing official. These records will also be available free of charge on NAI's Genealogy site, FindMyPast and FamilySearch.

National Archives of Ireland's Griffith's Valuation House and Field books: Progress came to an abrupt halt when it was discovered that the catalogue listing of this collection was, shall we say, a bit pear-shaped. For example, when a House Book was being 'called up', you might find you've received a Field Book. So while this record set is still in the pipe, it's nowhere near the far end yet. A new list will have to be created and the database completely reworked. The good news is that the books have all been scanned, so it's not right back to the start.

National Archives of Ireland's Wills and testamentary collections:
Still billed for later in the year.

General Register Office's civil registration records on IrishGenealogy.ie: Still no date for launch of the so-called 'enhanced' version of Ireland's civil registration indexes. Although it's still being talked about as if it's imminent, I wouldn't be surprised if this addition to the website is not completed in April.

Additions of maps to Griffith's Valuation database on AskAboutIreland: The upload (see previous blogpost) is now 'very close', I'm told. It's taken a bit longer than originally expected because many thousands of the maps crossed county borders and needed to be 'geographically' cropped. The final steps are now being taken and the upload will begin shortly. The upload process has not yet been confirmed but it seems likely it will be done county-by-county.