Suffolk parish registers to go online?

[Trevor Rix]

Here is the latest update that I received on 30 May 2019.

"Work is progressing on some of the strands of work in the digital task list/plan.  The development of the new hard plastic Reader’s Card, with photo ID has moved forward and it will look something like this.

The planning and development of the digital requirements for ‘The Hold’ have moved forward with the University of Suffolk including arrangements for; the computer room, cabling, Wi-Fi, security and access systems etc.

More investigative work and a small pilot has been done on barcoding archive boxes to inform planning for the move and any future development of an online ordering system.

Staff have made more catalogue descriptions of record office collections and digital images available through the suffolkarchives.co.uk website including 12 Beccles House of Correction/Gaol books (Ref A1122/1-12 = 3,257 double page images providing the names and other information on inmates).

There has, however been little progress on the parish registers project.  The new Director of Growth, Highways and Infrastructure is aware of some of the issues involved in licensing.  A meeting was held earlier this month with Chris Norton, Manager of FamilySearch Records Access & Services and Whitney Peterson from their Content Strategy Team to gain a better understanding of what they are working on with other record offices.

Best wishes

Paul West
County Councillor for Bixley Division
Cabinet Member, Suffolk County Council"

[Trevor Rix]

What I don't understand is, how can Suffolk derive an income stream by collaborating with FamilySearch?

This subject of digitising Suffolk Parish Registers appears to be going nowhere fast.

In my opinion, the decision should be taken to collaborate with the experts, Ancestry or Findmypast, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with a possibility of failure if the dismal income from the digitisation of wills is anything to go by.

[pinefamily]

Familysearch digitize a lot of records,  mostly what they already have on microfilm. The two commercial behemoths actually get some of their images from familysearch.

[Trevor Rix]

Yes, many monochrome images digitised from old FamilySearch microfilms (not Suffolk) are also on Ancestry and Findmypast. Some are blurred and poor quality.

But this discussion is about a brand new scanning and digitising of original Suffolk parish registers in high quality colour.

The question is, would FamilySearch undertake that excercise, then Suffolk derive an income stream if FamilySearch share/licence those images to Ancestry or Findmypast? Is there any precedence for such an arrangement?

[BenRalph]

Could anyone tell me what site is the best to find records from Suffolk? I'm speaking of mainly BMD records. Ancestry & FindMyPast don't have a wealth of records compared to other counties I've researched which is a great shame as a huge chunk of my family lived there for at least a couple hundred years at least.

[Trevor Rix]

As you can see from this thread, lots of us are waiting for digital images of Suffolk parish registers to be made available online at a reasonable cost.

There is no best website for Suffolk research. The least worst is Findmypast who have some indexes of baptisms and marriages transcribed by Suffolk Family History Society. And Suffolk is well represented on the National Burial Index also available at Findmypast.

[jonwicken]

How did Essex do theirs? They have their own website with the images and now ancestry have a name index on their website with a link to the Essex website. Did ancestry do the index as there never used to be one?

[Trevor Rix]

Essex did theirs in house. Recently Essex have collaborated with Ancestry who created an index. That index is now on FamilySearch too.

[jonwicken]

Thank you. Why don't Suffolk follow the same format? It just seems so odd.

Anyone know anything about Essex's predicted or actual income from their site and how long it will take them to make the money back on what they spent setting it up?