Family history is still top draw for PRONI visitors

Click cover to download Digest

The Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure has published the Digest of Statistics/Annual Report 2014-15 for the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI).

It shows that the majority (84%) of new visitors to the archive in Titanic Boulevard, Belfast, cited family history as the main reason for their visit, down just slightly on the previous (record) year. Almost a half (48%) of these new visitors came from outside Northern Ireland, and the percentage who gave their place of origin as Canada or Australia/NewZealand (9% and 7% respectively) rose slightly.

In total, there were 20,398 visitors to PRONI in 2014/15, almost exactly the same as the year before.

The website was busy, of course, and coped with more than 11million visits, down from 14.5million in the previous year; Will Calendars remained the most popular online collection.

In second place were the Griffith's Valuation Revision/Cancelled Books.

You can find out more by downloading the Digest here (pdf 2.9Mb).