Friday 13 June 2014

Ancestry starts WAP to index Belfast NewsLetter BMDs

http://www.ancestry.com  /wiki/index.php?title=World_Archives_Project:_Belfast,_Northern_Ireland,_The_Belfast_Newsletter,_1738-1925
Ancestry has launched a new World Archives Project to index nearly 190-years worth of Birth, Marriage and Death announcements from The Belfast Newsletter.

The newspaper, which claims to the oldest English language daily title, dates back to 1737. It was originally produced twice a week before switching to daily publication in 1855. This project would see all editions up to 1925 indexed and searchable by name (they are currently browseable-only on Ancestry).

Importantly for genealogists, the paper's news, adverts and bmd announcements were not limited to the Belfast area; the Newsletter was distributed island-wide prior to Partition, and covered national and international news.

WAP volunteers will extract all birth, death and marriage notices, as well as engagements, obituaries and memoriams. These will be lifted only from notices that were published specifically to announce the event, not from regular news articles.

The Ancestry team have graded this keying project as of Average difficulty and they're looking for volunteers.

If you fancy giving some of your time to this worthwhile project (World Archive Projects result in free records being made available on Ancestry) you can find out more here.