National Registrations Scotland

[IMBER]

Well, to be fair to myself I did just say easier. The link I gave provides details of the exorbitant costs. It was just to provide another option. Apart from that many are unaware that in Scotland this sort of thing can be done locally. A day out in Embra is more fun of course. I've done something like this at Inverness. Having been warned in advance about costs I had fine tuned my queries on paper and hit the computer running. I was in and out in record time. Not as much fun of course and if you enjoy browsing and there's a real sticking point then the day out is probably the better option.

[Jim.h]

Hi Imber
Thanks for your e-mails, I didn't know that there was a facility like that in Aberdeen. Apart from costs is the information and assistance available the same as in HQ

Jim h

[ev]

It might be worth looking at the indexes on SP for births and deaths of all Horn children in Fife and West Lothian.
For a few credits that would give you something to work on.



ev

[Jim.h]

Hi EV

Tried that so now I will narrow my search and try again. Thanks for your help

Jim h

[IMBER]

Hi Imber
Thanks for your e-mails, I didn't know that there was a facility like that in Aberdeen. Apart from costs is the information and assistance available the same as in HQ

Jim h

All I can say is that the facility in Inverness is described as being identical to that in Edinburgh and different from the online ScotlandsPeople. For example, there are no restrictions on viewing the more recent records. The staff there were very helpful indeed. Perhaps 'phone the Aberdeen people as detailed in that link and confirm what's on offer? I also see that the Inverness charge is now £15 per day.

Imnber

[Jim.h]

Thanks for the info.......I have found the missing Aunts but it's nice to know what's available close at hand...I am pretty sure I will need to visit as the tree develops

Thanks again


Jim h

[Forfarian]

All I can say is that the facility in Inverness is described as being identical to that in Edinburgh and different from the online ScotlandsPeople. For example, there are no restrictions on viewing the more recent records. The staff there were very helpful indeed. Perhaps 'phone the Aberdeen people as detailed in that link and confirm what's on offer? I also see that the Inverness charge is now £15 per day.

Yes, I think that is the case. I believe the Mitchell Library in Glasgow has the same facilities at the same cost as the SP Centre in Edinburgh.

There are some things that are easier to do online.

The one that most often springs to mind is looking for a marriage when you don't have a date. Online, you can just put in the surnames and it will find the marriage (barring spelling variations) whereas in the SP Centre you have to look year by year.

Another is that you can search for a death online using a name and approximate birth year. Again, in the SP Centre you have to do it year by year if you want to use the year of birth as a parameter.

Searching year by year is easy enough - there's a button for 'next year' and one for 'previous year' so it's just one click to move to another year - but there are times when it would be nice just to put in the parameters and get all the possible matches at once.

Also, you don't need to put in the sex (or gender, if you want to be PC about it) online, but you have to put that in in the SP Centre. It means that if you are looking for the births of all the children of a couple you have to run two searches, one for boys and one for girls.