Why no digitisation of birth, mariage and death vital records?

[stanmapstone]

See Digitisation and Indexing (D&I) Project at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Register_Office_for_England_and_Wales#Digitisation_and_Indexing_(D&I)_Project

And Expenditure on the Digitisation of Vital Events project of civil registration records
 http://www.rootschat.com/links/01n2i/

Stan

[BushInn1746]

Hello

What the UK Government have opted for, is easier ordering of GRO Certificates and post 1858 Wills, by their own gov.uk websites.

Regarding information of the content (as a transcription), you really must see at least an image of the document, as I have seen some terrible and inaccurate transcriptions!

In the last few days three Richard Hoods were found amongst a list (on a main commercial website), but when the images were inspected and writing compared with the same adjacent handwriting, three were Richard Wood!

So never ever rely on a transcription, humans, OCR and pc systems are liable to errors!

ADDED: When back about 200 years, stuck and buying Death Certificates looking for a sideways ancestor, it might be useful to have the person present at Death, named in the Index, as some are relatives (and one might be unknown) and some not related.

Mark

[BumbleB]

On a personal basis, I don't actually want the GRO marriage certificate.  I much prefer to have a copy of the original entry from parish records - at least then you get the signatures, or X's,  of your ancestors. 

[stanmapstone]

You can get photocopies of the original marriage certificates, showing the original signatures, from some local registrars.

Stan

[BumbleB]

Yes, Stan, sorry I forgot about that.    Several of the ones I received, some years ago now, were the most horrendous examples of 20th century hand-writing 

[Guy Etchells]

You can get photocopies of the original marriage certificates, showing the original signatures, from some local registrars.

Stan

Not only that but it is possible to get digital copies of the formerly microfilmed Parish Registers of Baptism including some Births) Marriages and Burials (including some Deaths) by visiting your local LDS Family History Center.
Other venues including many Family History Societies & some libraries which still hold copies of the microfilmed registers for some/all parishes in their area.
Cheers
Guy

[mike175]

Having done a small amount of transcribing for the LDS in the past, I am most appreciative of all those volunteers who have devoted their time to making information available to us. Not to mention all the volunteers on RC who also give so much freely. I have tried to repay in kind where I can but I am indebted to so many RootsChatters over the years.

Our hobby is probably in a better position now than it has ever been .

Mike.

[aghadowey]

Your first post here on Rootschat in January 2017 was complaining in a similar vein-

Why so expensive for transcribed information? The whole lot should be online, and no more expensive than third party genealogy sites, who would be more than happy to undertake the digitisation work.

[CarolA3]

I would hand over the project to www.freebmd.org.uk (emphasis added) and bung them a chunk of cash to buy scanners and storage. They already have 270m out of an estimated 346m records, that "just" need linking to scanned certificates. It would be much more cost effective than manually retrieving and posting certificates.

What exactly do you want to hand over?  Are you saying that the FreeBMD organisation has, or should have, privileged access to the GRO's register copies in order to scan them?  Are you aware that the work of FreeBMD is done by volunteers in their own homes?

By the way, they don't 'have' any records at all.  They work with the published indices of the GRO's records, and a very fine job they make of it.

Carol

Added: The phrase 'reality check' has just come to mind for some reason.