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A Scottish Family History Research Service is to be set up with a grant
from the Executive of £1.6 million.
The service, to be fully operational in 2006, will create a
‘one-stop-shop’ for genealogy research by bringing together services
provided separately by project partners the General Register Office for
Scotland, National Archives of Scotland and Court of the Lord Lyon.
There will be a family history ‘campus’ based around the General Register
House and New Register House buildings.
Online and other facilities will be integrated to provide a seamless and
enhanced service to family historians.
Deputy Justice Minister Hugh Henry said:
"I am very pleased to announce as part of Spending Review 2002 the
approval of £1.6 m of funding over four years for this extremely
innovative and valuable project.
"This will involve three of the most respected institutions in government
in Scotland in pooling their many centuries’ worth of records and
expertise to provide a modern, seamless and customer-oriented service for
family historians.
"This reflects well the Executive’s priorities of cross-cutting
initiatives and putting the emphasis on service delivery. So we are
pleased to have agreed funding for the project as part of this year’s
Spending Review. We have allocated £1.6 million over the next four years
to help with the capital costs of creating a first class facility. This
will not only be of value to Scottish ancestor hunters, but to
international genealogical tourists."
Tourism and Culture Minister Mike Watson said:
"Genealogy is the third most popular interest among people using the World
Wide Web. Its importance to Scotland is illustrated by the fact the 20 per
cent of US visitors to Scotland said that tracing their family heritage
was the reason behind their visit. This has huge potential for our tourism
industry.
"It will provide a family history experience as well as a research
facility and will build on the resources already available to genealogists
through services such as ancestralscotland.com which I launched in January
this year."
The Scottish Family History Research Service is intended to build on work
already begun in creating digital images of their records, and online
versions of indexes and catalogues.
It will enable staff to give a fuller, more tailored service to
genealogists to provide enhanced exhibition facilities, and to exploit
more fully the visitor potential of the Register House buildings.
A part of the project will encourage local authorities to set up similar
one-stop-shops in their areas.
In addition, the Scottish Family History Research Service will bring
together the various internet facilities offered by the project partners
to improve the links between them, and work towards seamless online
searching of the resources they contain.
At present, the main records which individuals use as the basis for their
family history are held by three separate institutions (General Register
Office for Scotland (GROS), National Archives of Scotland (NAS) and the
Court of the Lord Lyon).
They occupy two buildings – General Register House and New Register House
– which lie in close proximity at the East End of Princes Street in
Edinburgh. The project announced today aims to exploit this proximity to
create a Register House campus that is fully integrated behind the scenes
and seamless to the customer.
GROS is an associated department of the Executive and forms part of the
Scottish Administration. One of its functions is to make its genealogical
database available to members of the public. It holds the statutory
registers of births, marriages and deaths and census records for Scotland
and Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland.
NAS is an Executive Agency and Associated Department of the Scottish
Executive. NAS has one of the most varied collections of archives in the
British Isles. It is the main archive for sources for the history of
Scotland as a separate kingdom, her role in the British Isles and the
links between Scotland and many other countries over the centuries.
NAS holds records spanning the 12th to 21st
centuries, touching on virtually every aspect of Scottish life. As well as
being the repository for the public and legal records of Scotland, NAS
also holds many local and private archives. It also advises Scottish
government departments, institutions, businesses and private individuals
on the care of their records.
On behalf of the Sovereign the Lord Lyon King of Arms exercises the Royal
Prerogative to grant Arms to ‘virtuous and well deserving persons’. The
Court of the Lord Lyon is a court of law, and deals with petitions for
grants of Arms. The Court holds the Registers of Arms and of Genealogies
as well as other collections.
News Release: SEJD166/2002
03/12/2002
www.scotland.gov.uk/pages/news/2002/12/SEJD166.aspx |