ScotlandsPeople - Why is it so expensive?

[maduganme]

I used to go to Edinburgh or Glasgow to do research, for one reason and another I have been doing it from home recently. I was quite shocked at the prices on the Scotland Peoples website.
1 credit to view results and 5 to view a record, given that it is £7GBP for 30 credits, that can work out very expensive especially if you open the wrong record.
Why is the cost so high compared to say RootsIreland? where you can pay £20 p/m and view up to 1000 records, and the results page is free.
Is it just me that finds this very expensive??

[KGarrad]

Sounds remarkably cheap to me?!

[djct59]

Quite probably yes. One record, which confirms full name, age and details of parents, costs five credits or £1.16.

If you charge wildly in without narrowing your search down, you will end up with a few misses, that is true, but the quality of the records themselves is, in my experience, massively more helpful to the serious researcher than the English equivalent. FWIW I have not found the Irish records particularly useful as their early record keeping was not always of the highest quality and there are numerous gaps.

[aghadowey]

Scotland's People is a great site (I'm sure lots of others will agree) but actually, Rootsireland is extremely expensive if you've only a few records to check and their transcriptions can be 'interesting' to say the least.

[JMStrachan]

Well, it's a lot cheaper than getting hold of certificates in England. If you do your search carefully on ScotlandsPeople and narrow the field down enough to be able pick the right record, you can search for and download 5 certificates for £7, which is a lot better than the £9(?) per certificate in England.

But it can quickly add up if you get carried away. One way I keep the cost down is to search elsewhere first: FamilySearch, Ancestry, etc., so I know pretty much exactly what I'm looking for on ScotlandsPeople. And you need to be flexible about the spelling of names and possible locations.

I haven't used RootsIreland. Can you view the original document or certificate on their site, or is it just an index?

[djct59]

For example:

Earlier today I looked up a tree on MyHeritage and found that one of my g-g-g-grandfathers seemed to have a  remarkable number of children from his second marriage. I therefore narrowed my search to parish birth records for his part of Lanarkshire, and allowed a fifteen year window. One credit revealed the names and dates of birth of three children born to him and his wife. Problem solved.

Cost? 23 pence

[maduganme]

@KGarrad Do you think so?
@ JMStrachan Yes, you can view the record rather than just the index.

I'm not a member of ancestry, and I do narrow searches down as much as possible, but apart from comparing other websites considering it is only £15 at the actual research centres to view as many as you like I found this quite expensive.

[MonicaL]

I'm not a member of ancestry, and I do narrow searches down as much as possible, but apart from comparing other websites considering it is only £15 at the actual research centres to view as many as you like I found this quite expensive.

For many people researching in Scotland, visiting a main genealogy centre is not possible at all  It is great if you can access these centres. You can hire a terminal for the day for £15 and then view online as many certs as you can, including more current certs which are not available online now due to privacy/data protection as they are too recent to view online.

On the basis that many people (elsewhere in the UK or internationally) do have to use SP, I think it offers a great service. You can currently view images online up to these timescales www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/Content/Help/index.aspx?r=554&413

I do not have any experience of searching for online BMD images in Ireland, but I do know that for England and Wales from mid 1837 to now, the cost of ordering the extract is currently £9.25.

I am a big fan of SP...regardless of my wasted units along the way 

Monica

[djct59]

Those Rootschatters who are not familiar with the Scotlandspeople Centre might like to note that there is one major difference between using the centre for £15 and going online, namely -

If you know your ancestor's name and approximate date and place of birth, but no more, online you can search for a marriage record for the county covering twenty years for 23p. If your ancestor has a common name, that may yield dozens of results, but if you have a spouse's name or can guess a parish, you might find it first or second time. If you want a date of death but have no idea whether they died in childhood or as a ninety year old spinster you can search as widely as you like - again if you know where they lived this will cost 23p.

At the search room, EVERY search is restricted to a five year window. Thus, if you have no idea when someone was married and died, it can take fifteen minutes to do work that can be done online in two, and searching for children can be very laborious.