Church Records Online

[Archiver]

Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives have announced on their website that the Scottish Church Records are to be made available online at the end of October. It looks like access will be restricted to various institutions to start with though, so you'll have to find somewhere which is offering it to start with. It seems they might go onto Scotlands People at some point though. From the website:

"Online access to about 11,000 volumes representing some of Scotland's most important church records will be available at Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives at the end of October.

In May 2003, the National Archives of Scotland, under an agreement with the Church of Scotland and Family Search, began the digital capture of the records of kirk sessions, presbyteries, synods and the General Assembly (from the sixteenth century to 1901) deposited in the NAS and other Scottish archives.

The digitisation project encompasses a wide range of records created by the four levels of the church courts, including minute books, act books, proclamation registers, communion rolls, seat rent books, poor relief accounts etc. It also includes the records of secession churches which later rejoined the Church of Scotland. These records constitute a major body of historical information and are used by a wide variety of professional and amateur historians.

Archive staff will be demonstrating this online resource at Union Square on Thursday 28th and Friday 29th October so make sure you come along!"
http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/archives

[SarahND]

Hi Archiver
This sounds brilliant. Will this include the kirk session records from Aberdeen (e.g. Old Machar) that are only available on microfilm at NAS, or is it just what is already on the computers in Edinburgh?

Regards,
Sarah

[Archiver]

Hmm, unfortunately it looks like the Old Machar ones aren't on the site. The church still holds the originals, and as far as I'm aware it is possible to access them by phoning them up. I'll see if I can find out about the microfilm records, though, and see if they are to be included at some point.

The site includes what is on the computers in Edinburgh, and is still being updated, so you will be able to access records for the whole of Scotland from the site. At the moment, Aberdeen and Orkney are the only two which officially have access, but it will be spreading out across Scottish archives over the winter. Access from the archives is free as well! Not sure about the cost of printing / downloading images yet.

The records will be made available through Scotland's People sometime in the next year, and it will work on a sort of subscription basis. As the records are too difficult to index, you'll pay a sum of money for a certain amount of time in order to look at the records, rather than view them on a credits basis.

[SarahND]

As the records are too difficult to index, you'll pay a sum of money for a certain amount of time in order to look at the records, rather than view them on a credits basis.

That's an interesting idea. An inspiration for all to upgrade to a faster internet connection!

Keep us posted on the developments.

Cheers,
Sarah