News
20th July
2010
Lost
Cousins
LostCousins is a website where family historians who share the same
ancestors can 'discover' each other, exchange information and collaborate
on future research. The connections are made using census data and the
1911 Irish census is one of seven sets of census returns that can be
utilised in this way on the Lost
Cousins website. Other census returns cover Britain, the US and
Canada.
19th June
2010
GRONI
The
General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI)
has announced that it is to extend its public searchroom in both size
and the number of PC terminals available for public access. In future,
the searchroom will have over twenty public computer positions thus
negating to constant need to book weeks in advance. Also, GRONI has
completed the firtst stage of its computerisation project. The NI Birth
Indexes now note mothers' maiden surnames for every entry from when
registration first began in 1864.
The
Minister for Finance & Personnel, Sammy Wilson MLA, has informed
CIGO that the delay to the passing of the Civil
Registration Bill 2007 relates to various amendments which
need to be made to the Bill on foot of other legislation which has been
passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly since the Bill was commenced
in 2007. Once the required changes have been identified and drafted
the Bill will continue through its parliamentary procedures.
18th June
2010
www.irishgenealogy.ie
On
June 17 th at St. Werburgh's Church of Ireland parish church in Dublin
Mary Hanafin TD, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, launched the
latest tranche of data to be added to the website irishgenealogy.ie.
The website, sponsored by her department, contains an index to church
records (and scanned images for many parishes) from around Ireland.
The site is entirely free to use. Until recently, the site contained
only Catholic records from two counties, comprising the entire parish
records for Co. Kerry and a small number for the city of Dublin. But,
with the latest additions, the site now also includes original Church
of Ireland records, from counties Kerry, Cork, Dublin and Carlow and
is supplemented with the various published transcripts of those parishes
whose records were subsequently destroyed in 1922 when the Public Record
Office of Ireland was consumed by fire. The website now contains more
than two million records, all of which can be accessed online at no
cost.
Much of the surviving Church of Ireland
parishes records for Dublin city are included, some dating back to the
early seventeenth century. Significantly, even though these are ‘Protestant'
records, up until the opening of the city's cemeteries in the 1830s,
the parish burial registers generally include all denominations.
Contracts have been signed with data
agencies to continue the work with the completion of the Catholic parish
records for Dublin and for south and west Co. Cork (which comprise the
RC diocese of Cork & Ross) before the end of the year. At that time
about a further million records will be added to the website.
Making
the scanned images of the various parish registers available online
(in addition to the indexes) will have the added benefit of preventing
yet further wear and tear of the original records.
Website:
www.irishgenealogy.ie
3rd June
2010
1901
Census of Ireland
The 1901 Census of Ireland has been published online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ today.
12th April
2010
Archives
in Crisis Symposium
Saturday
10th April saw over 250 archivists, readers, genealogists, students,
staff and researchers pack into Trinity's arts block for the ‘Archives
in Crisis' symposium. Such an overwhelming turn out proves beyond any
doubt that there is strong opposition to the Government's plan to merge
Ireland's National Archives into the National Library.
At
a time when it has almost become impossible to motivate public opinion,
this extraordinarily well attended event will send a very strong and
clear message to Mary Hanafin TD, the new Minister for Tourism, Culture
& Sport, that those who work within the world of archives need to
be fully consulted before any draft legislation is published. As an
initial step the minister could show good faith by moving quickly to
complete the appointment of the National Archives Advisory Council (NAAC)
which is outstanding since the last NAAC went out of office in 2007.
The appointment of the NAAC is a statutory requirement under section
20 of the National Archives Act 1986.
You
can read more about this story here
and in The
Irish Times (12th April).
16th February
2010
UK
Government Set to Abolish Edited Electoral Register?
CIGO
has discovered that out of the blue, and only eight years after it was
first created, the British government is proposing to abolish the publicly
available UK Edited
Electoral Register .
While access to the Full Electoral Register is limited to purposes relating
to elections, crime detection and fraud prevention, the Edited
Electoral Register (which
anyone can opt out of) is open to all. When completing the yearly application
form to be entered onto the annual electoral register each UK citizen
can choose whether or not to be included in the publicly available Edited
Electoral Register .
In
October 2007, Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minster, commissioned Dr Mark
Walport and Richard Thomas “ to undertake an independent review
of the use of personal information in the public and private sector
”. Amongst a number of recommendations is one that the Edited Electoral
Register should cease to be commercially available and if this proposal
is carried that it should be abolished as it would no longer serve any
purpose.
The
UK Justice Minister, Michael Wills, has admitted that “ there are
strong opinions on the future of the Edited Register and before considering
any changes we need to further understand the impact that this may have
on different groups of people. The
Government has noted Dr. Mark Walport and Richard Thomas's recommendation
that the Edited Register should be abolished. But we also recognise
that the edited version of the electoral register acts as a comprehensive
list of names and addresses of use to businesses, organisations and
individuals .” The UK government
has launched a period of consultation which they say “ will help
us consider the potential impact of the changes proposed .” The
Ministry of Justice Press Office say that the consultation “ aims
to build a firmer evidence base about the advantages and disadvantages
of the edited version of the electoral register and the impact of any
changes made to it .” And that “ views and evidence are invited
from the public and other stakeholders about how they could be affected
by its abolition .. On the basis of the evidence gathered,
the government will consider a range of options for the future of the
Edited Register including abolition, changing the process by which individuals
are included on it, or improving public awareness of it. ”
However,
the consultation seeks views on six proposed options, none of which
includes ‘no change' which might suggest that the abolition of the Edited
Electoral Register in one form or another is a foregone conclusion.
The six proposals are:
i)
abolish the Edited Register as soon as practicable.
ii)
set a timescale or trigger point for abolition of the Edited Register.
iii)
abolish the Edited Register as soon as practicable, but consider extending
access to the full electoral register.
iv)
retain the Edited Register, but impose restrictions in legislation on
who can purchase it and for what purposes.
v)
replace the current 'opt out' provision on the Edited Register with
an 'opt in' option.
vi)
improve guidance for the public about the Edited Register.
For
genealogists, it looks as if the last of the six options would be
the best to plump for, “improve guidance for the public about the Edited
Register”. More information about this issue and how to submit your
views can be found on the Ministry
of Justice website. The period of consultation closes on Tuesday,
23rd February 2010 . This issue is urgent and CIGO cannot impress
enough that a clear message should be sent to the UK Justice Minister,
Michael Wills, that genealogists continue to require unfettered access
to the UK Edited Electoral Register.
12th February
2010
Major
Release of Personal Data from UK ‘War Time’ National Register
The National
Health Service Information Centre (NHS-IC)
has announced the launch of a new
fee-paying service giving access to historic data held on approximately
35 million deceased individuals whose names were recorded on the ‘National
Register for England and Wales’ compiled in 1939. In essence
this data is similar to census data in that it is arranged by household
and includes basic details about the entire UK population (England &
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) as it stood in 1939 at the outbreak
of war. The NHS-IC’s announcement is made on foot of successful
Freedom of Information Act requests by both Mr.
Steven Smyrl and Mr.
Guy Etchells, both professional genealogists.
The National Register
The National Register, often referred to as the ‘1939 Schedule’,
was created under The
National Registration Act 1939 (NRA) and was an emergency measure
which took a snap-shot of the entire UK population on 29th September
1939. The data recorded was used to issue identity cards and for the
‘calling up’ of men and women to the Armed Forces for the
war effort. A number of 'sample' blank pages and forms from the register
can be seen here.
From 1948 the National Register was used for both national registration
(until that ended in the early 1950s) and for the creation of the NHS.
For the NHS it was used to establish and maintain a register, containing
personal details of each living person’s registration with an
NHS General Practitioner in each constituent part of the United Kingdom.
Subsequently, personal data was added into the National Register in
the form of annotations to the data originally collected under the NRA.
The data was constantly kept up to date as a manual patient register
until the computerised NHS Central Register was launched 1991. As such,
the register holds data about both living and deceased people. Many
of those who were already elderly in 1939 would now of course have been
born in the middle of the nineteenth century and in a few cases even
before Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837!
The NRA compelled the population to provide the following information:
full names; sex; date of birth; profession; home address; marital status;
and whether a member of one of the UK Armed Forces. From 1948 additional
data was added to the National Register (up until the creation of the
NHS Central Register in 1991) including: changes of name; and, where
relevant, the date and place of death.
The individual ‘schedules’ (these are the forms upon which
the original information was recorded on 29th September 1939) were until
2008 held by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but were transferred
to the new NHS-IC in that year. Up until that time ONS had ran a very
popular service called ‘Traceline’ which for a fee would
search the National Register (and the annotated records created after
1939) in hopes of locating an entry for a given individual. Traceline
would then either offer to forward a letter to that person if they appeared
(from the records) to be still living - or if deceased they would provide
the enquirer with the date and place of death (and alternative surname(s)
where a married woman was concerned).
In April 2008 Steven Smyrl (one of CIGO's two Executive Liaison Officers)
challenged this decision with an appeal to the UK Information
Commissioner. The NHS-IC used a number of delaying tactics and it
took until September 2009 when they finally relented and took heed of
the Information Commissioner’s guidance in relation to the application
of the DPA. The NHS-IC had tried to argue that it could not answer Steven’s
enquiry for information about a particular person who appeared in their
records because to process such a request would be to infringe the privacy
of the “data subject”. He successfully argued that such
a stand did not make sense as the DPA does not extend to the deceased
– a principle that the UK Information Commissioner had conveyed
to the NHS-IC during the period of their investigation. Finally, in
September and October 2009 the NHS-IC relented and disclosed the information
requested and included various addresses and alternative dates of birth
for the deceased person. Subsequently, in correspondence with Steven
the Information Commissioner described his appeal to them as one which
“actually raised some interesting and novel points concerning
data protection and the application of the Freedom of Information Act”.
Although Steven was the first person to successfully obtain information
(in September 2009) from the National Register under the provisions
of the Freedom of Information Act, it was Guy
Etchells’ case which initially caught the interest of the
UK media.
Like Steven, Guy (who is a professional genealogist based in Yorkshire
and who was pivotal in the early release of the 1911 census for England
& Wales) had also been campaigning for the release of data from
the National Register. When the register was transferred from ONS to
NHS-IC he continued his campaign and applied for the full details of
all people noted at a particular address in England. The NHS-IC refused
to disclose the data Guy requested and he too appealed to the UK Information
Commissioner. In November 2009 the Commissioner issued a Decision
Notice upholding the NHS-IC policy of not disclosing data about
living people but finding in Guy’s favour that he should have
been given the data relating to those at the given address who were
deceased.
Accessing the National Register for England & Wales will cost £42
per enquiry and for this the enquirer will be provided with the full
details about each individual at the same address as recorded in September
1939. More details can be found here.
In Scotland the cost will be only £13 and more information can
be found on the website of the Scottish General
Register Office. However, at this time it is not clear how access
will be managed for the Northern Ireland part of the National Register
as the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) recently admitted
that the collection, which comprises many hundreds of volumes, “is
extremely large, is completely uncatalogued and is stored in our offsite
storage facility.”! PRONI can be contacted through their
website.
25th January
2010
Federation
of Family History Societies' January 'Ezine' published
The UK Federation
of Family History Societies (FFHS) has published theJanuary edition
of its Internet magazine, Ezine.
It contains an interesting article about early Irish maps.
23rd January
2010
SGNI
Calling for PRONI to Rethink 'Move' Closure
The Society of Genealogists
Northern Ireland (SGNI) are calling for the Director of the Public Record
Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Mrs. Aileen McClintock, to think
again about the proposed closure of PRONI for up to eight months to
allow for the removal of the archives from PRONI's current home to new
premises in Belfast'sTitantic Quarter. SGNI says that the move should
be managed in a manner which limits disruption to public access to PRONI's
unique holdings and which would be more in-keeping with the experience
of other national archives in moving records. You can read more about
this story here.
11th January
2010
Space
Crisis at National Archives of Ireland
Following Fiona Gartland's
Irish Times article about the crisis of the lack of storage
at the National Archives (NAI), a letter appeared in the same newspaper
by well-known professional genealogist Paul Gorry and former President
of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland (APGI) setting
out what needs to be done to secure the future of the NAI.
In his letter Gorry
states "The crisis facing the National Archives [has been]
highlighted by Fiona Gartland.
"Frances McGee, archives keeper, is quoted as stating there is
a chronic lack of space and the warehouse to the rear of the current
premises is inadequate for long-term storage of documents.
"In 1922, during the Civil War, almost the entire contents of
the Public Record Office of Ireland were incinerated in the siege of
the Four Courts. This shameful act of cultural vandalism was perpetrated
by the founders of this State. Wittingly or unwittingly, they robbed
us of countless unique and irreplaceable records of our heritage.
"We are supposed to have learned our lesson after 1922, but it
seems that we have not. In lieu of a civil war, the Government proffers
“recession” as an excuse for endangering what has been accumulated in
the wake of 1922.
"The National Archives of Ireland has been starved of resources
for decades. Evidently the Government has a low opinion of our heritage.
Its current plan for the archive is to merge it into the National Library.
Far from promoting the interests of the National Archives, such a move
would reduce it to a component of the National Library's manuscript
department where it would compete with other departments for even more
limited funding.
"The National Library's dismantling of the Genealogical Office
(a “branch” of the Library, according to the legislation) should give
some indication of the fate of the National Archives in that scenario.
"The very idea that the National Archives could be absorbed into,
or even merge equally with, the National Library is an affront to what
is left of our heritage. Instead of this philistine approach, what the
National Archives needs is adequate funding, staffing and premises,
the re-appointment of the National Archives Advisory Council and, of
course, continued autonomy. Recessions come and go; the stain of cultural
vandalism is indelible."
5th January
2010
Space
Crisis at National Archives of Ireland
Fiona Gartland, a
columnist with The Irish Times, has highlighted
the ongoing problem of lack of space at the National Archives (NAI)
premises in Bishop Street, Dublin. She said that "Many state papers
due to become available to the public [this year] will not be accessible
because of storage problems at the National Archives". CIGO has
established that previous annual increments sent to NAI have already
been stored away in the warehouse to the rear of the main archives building
because of a lack of storage. This material too is inaccessible. Even
more worrying, the warehouse has problems with both humidity control
and its roof which might at any time let in rain water. Gartland quotes
archivist and deputy head of NAI Frances Magee saying that "If
paper is stored in good condition it will last a very long time. It
must not be too warm and relative humidity must be right; it is very
important that it is dry. It is very difficult to acheive those conditions
if the building is not purpose-built." CIGO knows well that the
warehouse is not purpose built, in fact it is a former biscuit factory.
Quite rightly Magee says further that "in the long term the only
solution is to provide new, purpose-built accommodation for the State's
archives somewhere in the city centre". Once again CIGO calls on
the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism to heed the call for better
premises for this unique national institution before disaster strikes
and we see a repeat of the fire of 1922 which destroyed the contents
of the Public Record Office of Ireland.
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