Research before records were available online

[a-l]

I started my research early 70's and how I loved travelling to various parts of the country to churches and records offices . I felt so privileged to both see and touch those old records an amazing feeling to be touching the past.                                         I spent many a year travelling the UK helping Americans trace their trees as they couldn't access information at that time.                                                               Wish I was still able to do it.

[a-l]

Although the internet can be a valuable tool it's often innacurate and trees aren't always researched just copied , causing extra work if you can be bothered to do it. The trees that have been compiled by adding a dozen other trees of the same surname but don't actually fit , makes me wonder why they put them online.           

[eadaoin]

I think they like the idea of an on-line presence?
I was quite proud of myself having a web-site (not a family tree one), but when yahoo closed down the free websites, I didn't bother to revive it (yet!).

eadaoin

[susieroe]

I started my research early 70's and how I loved travelling to various parts of the country to churches and records offices . I felt so privileged to both see and touch those old records an amazing feeling to be touching the past.                                         I spent many a year travelling the UK helping Americans trace their trees as they couldn't access information at that time.                                                               Wish I was still able to do it.

Wonderful, handling the actual registers! I remember opening an early one, a Leicestershire village but can't remember which, and the Vicar had decorated a whole page proclaiming Elizabeth I's accession (he must have done it retrospectively). Beautifully coloured and illuminated, it was lovely to come across that.

[jbml]

Wonderful, handling the actual registers! I remember opening an early one, a Leicestershire village but can't remember which, and the Vicar had decorated a whole page proclaiming Elizabeth I's accession (he must have done it retrospectively). Beautifully coloured and illuminated, it was lovely to come across that.

It is indeed wonderful - but also every time we handle them it is, ultimately, destructive of the records themselves in some small degree.

I think it is important that we all assist one another by using the digital / microfiche / microfilmed / transcribed versions as much as we can, and only ask to see and handle the original records when it is truly necessary to resolve a query which we cannot resolve in any other way.

[susieroe]

Wonderful, handling the actual registers! I remember opening an early one, a Leicestershire village but can't remember which, and the Vicar had decorated a whole page proclaiming Elizabeth I's accession (he must have done it retrospectively). Beautifully coloured and illuminated, it was lovely to come across that.

It is indeed wonderful - but also every time we handle them it is, ultimately, destructive of the records themselves in some small degree.

I think it is important that we all assist one another by using the digital / microfiche / microfilmed / transcribed versions as much as we can, and only ask to see and handle the original records when it is truly necessary to resolve a query which we cannot resolve in any other way.

True. Though I never got used to the microfiches, I was never sure if I'd read every section on each! But your point reminded me of one time: I sat opposite someone leafing through a register...and she licked her finger before turning each page.
That type of behaviour, from a very small minority I think, no doubt went a long way to the registers being withdrawn from normal use.

[confused73]

I started in the 80s and had no idea how to start, I originally went to the local library where a librarian was wonderful, but had limited resources, so was sent off to the local record office. What a difference, they did not want amateurs .They were down right unpleasant. So back to the library for help, the librarian told me what to ask for and how to go about it, so I spent half my time walking backwards and forwards, library to Record Office. Later I went to do some research for the school that I was teaching at, things had not improved.    I recently went back, and they were not so off hand but compared with the Welsh Record Offices that cannot do enough to help, the English offices that I have visited, they are not always user friendly, they really need to be more helpful to beginners, and visiters that do not know where things are kept. Sorry for those Record Offices that are friendly, but I am only writing how I have been treated, I do not expect to have them wait on me or do my research, just be friendly, and if I ask for some advice as to where I can look next if I have hit a brick wall try to be helpful.
So much as I love to see the original copies I welcome the use of digital records that I can access from home.

[a-l]

For those of us who were able to work with original records , I think we were so incredibly lucky to have had that opportunity . The youngsters who follow will not have that priviledge.

[jbml]

For those of us who were able to work with original records , I think we were so incredibly lucky to have had that opportunity . The youngsters who follow will not have that priviledge.

I think it varies from place to place, to be fair.

On my first visit to Northampton Records Office, I encountered a register entry which was very difficult to construe ... so they toddled off and fetched me the Bishop's Transcripts, and ten minutes later I was leafing (carefully!!) through a clip of 17th century parchments.