Wednesday 29 April 2015

NLI announces date for launch of RC registers' website

Never mind all the summer wedding dates, here's the only REALLY important Save the Date of the year: Wednesday 8 July.

That's the day the National Library of Ireland (NLI) will be launching its new free website holding almost 400,000 images of Catholic parish register microfilms. It will be the culmination of a three-year digitisation project.

In today's official announcement, the NLI’s Ciara Kerrigan, who is managing the digitisation of the parish registers, said: “We announced initial details of this project last December, and received a hugely enthusiastic response from people worldwide with an interest in Irish family history. We are delighted to announce that the project has been progressing well, and we will be able to publish all the digitised records online from 8th July onwards.

“This is the most significant ever genealogy project in the history of the NLI. The microfilms have been available to visitors to the NLI since the 1970s. However, their digitisation means that, for the first time, anyone who likes will be able to access these registers without having to travel to Dublin.”

Typically, the parish registers include information such as the dates of baptisms and marriages, and the names of the key people involved, including godparents or witnesses. The digital images of the registers will be searchable by parish location only, and will not be transcribed or indexed by the NLI.

“The images will be in black and white, and will be of the microfilms of the original registers,” explained Ms. Kerrigan. “There will not be transcripts or indexes for the images. However, the nationwide network of local family history centres holds indexes and transcripts of parish registers for their local areas. So those who access our new online resource will be able to cross-reference the information they uncover, and identify wider links and connections to their ancestral community by also liaising with the relevant local family history centre.”

Ten weeks to go....


Background: Read my blog report from December 2014 announcing the NLI's plans for a new online presence for its RC register collection.