census cd's

[SJ_Booker]

can anyone give me a bit more info on the census cd's that you can buy?

do they just contain pictures of the census or has someone transcribed them so you can do searches?

are they different from each supplier? is there a specific company's one i should get?

[Gadget]

Hi

Most are images of census pages without an index. They're fine if you know where to look or for rural areas but if you have to look through even a smallish town, it can take a while -  but that's what you'd have to do in a Research Centre. I prefer using the original images - or copies of the original images - than the available indexes because of transcription errors.

A number of firms supply them and I don't want to do any free advertizing so it would be worth Googling - they'll show up.

Gadget

[Emjaybee]

It is alleged that certain census cd's are being pirated on a well known auction site.

Please be sure you are in contact with the prime seller.


Mike

[PaulineJ]

They can also have advantages because they often (for larger districts) contain street indexes, and you can more easily be certain that pages/ books aren't missing. (Unlike Ancestry)!

Some suppliers do also create their own name indexes online, which are available on a subscription basis.

Pauline

[Sylviaann]

I got a name index with one of my census CDs.  It was done by people who bought the CD and they got some sort of discount for doing it.

It's amazing how many people are just listed as A........  B....  etc.   I know some of them are hard to read but some of The people doing the indexing did not try very hard to recognise the names.  You can be lucky with them but you usually end up searching the whole area.

I have 1891 and 1901 of London and have hardly used them.

Sylviaann

[Rebecca Steele]

I've only ever ordered one census cd, and that was just images .... some of them arn't even readable still I suppose thats the way it goes.

Personally, I'd wait until its all transcribed on ancestry.