ScotlandsPeople - Why is it so expensive?

[sugarbakers]

Sounds like resounding support for SP's pricing policy for certs and documents, but nobody's mentioned the censuses ?

The Scotland censuses to 1901 are also available elsewhere (Ancestry/FindMyPast) where seaching is made much easier by their broader indexing, but SP has the monopoly for the 1911 making some searches prohibitive, both financially and, in some cases, practically, whilst online browsing of a street, village or occupation seems no longer an option.

Oh for those sets of CDs we used to buy !

Bryan


[I mentioned this last year at http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=706810 ]

[Rustypup]

 
     Like many researchers starting out I have wasted credits on SP but am now looking
     elsewhere before and narrowing down before I commit my credits.

     Very lucky where I live, the local Heritage Centre gives 20 per cent discount on top
     up cards which cost £5.60 instead of £7.00 which helps a great deal.


       Rustypup

[MonicaL]

Bryan, I remember when I started researching my lines about 8 yrs or so ago, before the Scottish transcripts (not original images which are only available, as you mention, on SP) became available elsewhere on subscription sites, loosing heart (and so much money  ) when searching one of my main lines (MacDonalds in the Argyll and Inverness-shire  ). Freecen www.freecen.org.uk is amazing but coverage for many areas past 1851 is still a continuing (amazing) task being by volunteers. The transcripts have been a great help for census searches up to 1901. 1911 for the census remains an issue for sure...back to the dark ages of searching 

Rustypup, great to bring up the discount voucher system. Worth mentioning you need to be in Scotland to be able to purchase SP units & discount from specific places.

maduganme, you haven't posted back and all these comments whilst not overwhelming might be just that simply because there have been so many!

Everyone as always just trying to help with their own personal experiences really.

Big long old post here on getting the most out of SP (there are some tricks to learn for everyone) www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=562668.0  See you have added a post on there too which is good.

Monica 

[sugarbakers]

The transcripts have been a great help for census searches up to 1901. 1911 for the census remains an issue for sure...back to the dark ages of searching 

Agreed, Monica ... a well designed website/business should really not be encouraging researchers to go elsewhere to find the info they need 

***

1851 - 369
1861 - 601
1871 - 435
1881 - 1363
1891 - 956
1901 - 684

... these are the numbers of Greenock sugar workers I have so far from the censuses, thanks to purchased discs, my annual subscription to Ancestry, free access to FindMyPast at the library, and the contributions of fellow researchers.
Owing to SP being the sole provider of the 1911 census, and their short-sighted policy of 'thin-indexes', the closest search I can do is 'male', '14-70', 'Greenock", which provides me with 24,654 images and 987 index pages

... a grand total of £28,993 

Bryan


ADDED ... thinking about this further, the whole of Greenock (73,715) is probably on less than 3000 pages, so if it were possible to browse them it would cost ONLY about £3000 online, or considerably less at an SP centre.
Says even more about the pricing policy.


[ Hence my request at http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=706810 ]

[anne_p]

I visit the SP centres in Edinburgh and at The Mitchell Library on a fairly regular basis and think the £15 per day in wonderful.

Rustypup mentioned the top up vouchers at £5.60 instead of £7.
These are designed to Top Up a "Starter" voucher which costs £7 for 60 credits (  half that of an online purchase  where it's £7 for 30 credits).

I never buy top ups.
I simply buy a batch of start ups @ £7 each.
Some outlets ( libraries/heritage centres) do not allow this, but my local library has no issue with multiple purchases.
(I work there!)

The downside to this method is organising certificate purchases  because each start up comes with it's own username and password, which can cause problems if you need to access a purchased cert again.

When I have used all the credits on my voucher, I download all the purchases as a PDF annotationg it with the unique username and password.

[Forfarian]

I think it is astonishing that anyone can find SP expensive when you compare it with getting the equivalent in many other countries.

Via SP you can download, instantly, a digital image of any original birth, marriage or death certificate within the permissible time frame. For this, if you get your search right, that costs one credit for the search and 5 credits for the image. Total 6 credits, one-fifth of £7, makes a net cost of £1.40.

If you want an English or Welsh certificate, it will cost you £9.25, and you have to wait for it to arrive by post. That would buy six Scottish certificates.

You can download a Queensland certificate for AS$20 (£10.31 or 7 Scottish certificates)

A New Zealand certificate will cost you NZ$26.50 (£12.76 - about the cost of nine Scottish ones).

For the rest of Australia, charges range from AS$30.20 (£15.50 or 11 Scottish certificates) to a hefty AS$61.00 (£31.44 or 43 Scottish certificates).

And there are some places where you have to prove that you are closely related to the person in question before you are allowed to buy the certificate at all.

There are a few, a very few, places that have made historical birth, marriage and death certificates available free of charge, and some more that have made them available through commercial sites like Ancestry and similar. In some cases (parts of Canada for instance) you can go to a library and view them on microfilm.

Of the nations and states whose governments deal directly with allowing online access to historical birth, death and marriage certificates, Scotland is the cheapest I know of, followed by Northern Ireland where a digital image of a certificate costs £2.00.

I challenge you to tell me of any other part of the world from which I could download at the click of a mouse direct from the source (i.e. not via a commercial site like Ancestry) a digital image of an original official birth, marriage or death certificate for less than what SP charges.

I would also like to know of anywhere that offers a service resembling that in the SP centre.

As for genealogy being an expensive hobby (which I dispute), why should taxpayers subsidise it? No government systematically subsidises golf, or angling, or stamp collecting, or birdwatching, or bridge, and genealogy is no different from any other hobby.

[smudwhisk]

As for genealogy being an expensive hobby (which I dispute), why should taxpayers subsidise it? No government systematically subsidises golf, or angling, or stamp collecting, or birdwatching, or bridge, and genealogy is no different from any other hobby.

I think you'll find those of us who say it is an expensive hobby think it should be subsidised by governments.  It is expensive compared to some hobbies, but then not in relation to others.  It depends very much what you are interested in.  And yes it is expensive if you want to research properly and not rely entirely on transcripts, that's not to say you need to purchase a copy of every document related to your research.  Its not though as expensive now as it was with the increase in records being made available on subscription sites.

As someone who lives in a city with serious financial constraints, I would be extremely unhappy if the council announced they were providing free access to all archival material held in the library via the web for anyone in the world.  That's not what I pay my council tax for.  I know some Archives have managed to provide free access to their parish records, but this has usually been subsidised by a grant of some sort from another organisation and not entirely reliant on tax payers' money.

[JMStrachan]

I agree with you Forfarian. I think ScotlandsPeople is wonderful. I can remember its predecessor, whose name I forget, where you could look up the indexes online and order certificates, but had to wait for them to be posted out to you. I can't remember how much that cost but it was a lot more expensive than using ScotlandsPeople.

I suspect part of the issue is that these days too many people expect things that are online to be free. But they forget that online genealogy databases and digital images have to be produced, and the site has to be constantly administered, managed and updated. All that costs money. I certainly don't expect Scottish taxpayers to foot the bill. After all, the Scots have been extremely good at migrating so it could well be that the majority of people who access ScotlandsPeople don't live in Scotland. And that's no doubt why it is so much cheaper to use one of the records centres in Scotland - it's basically giving people who live in Scotland, or who choose to visit Scotland, a discount, which is fair enough.

I live and pay tax in England. If England ever gets round to creating an equivalent of SP I most certainly do not want the government to pay for it. I can think of better things for them to spend my contribution on.

[loobylooayr]

As for genealogy being an expensive hobby (which I dispute), why should taxpayers subsidise it? No government systematically subsidises golf, or angling, or stamp collecting, or birdwatching, or bridge, and genealogy is no different from any other hobby.

I agree almost completely  Family History research costs can be steep for people on a low income or pension, but so would any hobby be it knitting, baking, bungee jumping etc etc.
I personally don't think the costs are unreasonable. Operating centres and a website like SP comes at a cost. We can't expect access to records and certificates for nothing.
And yet as JM Strachan correctly points out I think a lot of people do expect to research family history for nothing, yet wouldn't expect to go to the gym or for a swim or go bowling for free   
As I said earlier on this thread my OH restores vintage motorbikes. My hobby costs peanuts compared to his. My sons are musicians (instruments, music books, CD's etc) - costs a fortune!
But other family members still ask me incredulously when I'm discussing   MY hobby - "How much will this be costing you ??"