Scotland family research

[Leanne.]

Do you think that Scotland is the most expensive place for researching family history ( considering I am in Australia so everything I want needs to be paid for and be availiable online ) I wish SP had a subscription option.

[aghadowey]

Perhaps you haven't done much overseas research...

Not all information will be online and free. Scotland's People certificates are excellent value and contain a huge amount of information which you don't see for many other countries.

[Leanne.]

Perhaps you haven't done much overseas research...

Not all information will be online and free. Scotland's People certificates are excellent value and contain a huge amount of information which you don't see for many other countries.

No not really. My mums side is from England, came to Australia in the 1800's.
My dad was born in Scotland and moved to Australia in 1960.

In NSW we have the BDM index online and you can search someone's name and on the preview it lets  you see year of registration and parent's names.
I find it hard on the SP website because you can't see parent's names before you pay to view the record.

I also have ancestry subscription so I can view as many records as I like without having to pay for each one. I get a bit annoyed on SP when I have to pay to view and it's the wrong person.

Maybe I am doing it wrong, but I am working with little information. Only going by marriage records.

[aghadowey]

If you have Ancestry then you can use it to view transcriptions of Scottish census records (up to 1901) which may give you a better idea of names and dates to search on SP. FamilySearch has some extracted births, etc. which can also help. Also try using a search engine like Google to find online information.
Meanwhile, have a look through this topic-
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=562668.0

[Leanne.]

If you have Ancestry then you can use it to view transcriptions of Scottish census records (up to 1901) which may give you a better idea of names and dates to search on SP. FamilySearch has some extracted births, etc. which can also help. Also try using a search engine like Google to find online information.
Meanwhile, have a look through this topic-
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=562668.0

Thank you, a lot of information there. I don't quite understand it all. I'll have to go over it a few times.

[Forfarian]

Do you think that Scotland is the most expensive place for researching family history ( considering I am in Australia so everything I want needs to be paid for and be availiable online ) I wish SP had a subscription option.

No, actually, I don't.

I can access, online, a digital image of any Scottish certificate before the closure dates (100 years for births, 75 for marriages, 50 for deaths) for £1.40 if I get the search right. To get just one English certificate I have to pay £9.25, and I have to wait for it to come by post. New Zealand and Australian ones cost more than that, and in some parts of America you can't access them at all.

And even finding a birth, marriage or death in Australia can be a challenge - not all parts of Australia have online indexes; when they do they don't usually go right up to date, and in some parts (notably Victoria) you have to pay $0.99 per result to view the index. Then you still have to pay for the actual certificate.

As far as I am aware, apart from one or two US states (Texas, for example) there is no other English-speaking country where you can download original birth, marriage and death certificates cheaper than the Scottish ones. I will be delighted if someone can tell me otherwise.

Indexes are all very well, but you need the original documents to be sure that you have got the right people.

As for the deficiencies of the Scottish index, these are historical. The online index is the same as the handwritten and later typed indexes kept since 1855. Spouse's name was not added to the marriage entries until the 1920s, mother's maiden name on birth listings in about 1928, and mother's maiden name on death entries from 1974. They are gradually adding more information to the indexes, but it will be a while before everything you could wish for will be in the index.

I am sure we would all like SP to have a subscription option.

[hdw]

I belong to the Borders Family History Society, and they sell Scotlandspeople vouchers to members at 30 for £5.65 instead of the usual Scotlandspeople online price of £7. Probably other family-history societies do this too, I don't know.

My wife, who is English, envies me the way in which within seconds I can often locate somebody I'm looking for and download B, M and D certificates, OPR and Census extracts, etc., at just 5 credits a page. And with the B, M and D certificates you are getting other people's entries on the same page for free - e.g. three entries per page in a births register. If you come, like me, from a little fishing village where everybody was related to everybody else, it's great to get these extra certificates for free, for you often know the families involved.

My wife has to use Ancestry to trace her English ancestors and is always being asked to pay more at a crucial juncture when she's about to find somebody. And they haven't transcribed all the records, even in the distant past. In Scotlandspeople's case it's just the more recent records that haven't yet been digitised, but they're working on it. Very occasionally the index is wrong and a particular birth, say, isn't on the page it should be. If you contact them they'll find it for you and refund the credits you've spent.

Harry

[Seaton Smithy]

I'm in Australia researching Scottish family history.

Scottish records are by far the CHEAPEST I've found!

By comparison, Scottish records are about 1 tenth of the cost of Victorian rerods (or to put it the other way, Victorian records are 10 x more expensive than Scottish records), and Victorian records are about the cheapest in Aus.

In addition, the Victorian BDMs search function is based on indexes that were put together by volunteers some years ago that are full of abbreviations - not just for place names, but for the individuals names as well so searches can be hit and miss.  Considering the price they charge, I find this outrageous.

[loobylooayr]

I would agree that I don't find the cost of Scotlands People website expensive. But you are well advised to use any free websites or your subscription one (if you have one) to do your homework before viewing any searches.
However I would agree with Leanne that life would be a lot easier if you could search the births using parents names.
Personally, I have tried one of the big well known online subscription sites on a free trial basis and have to say I was not impressed. I cancelled at the end of the trial.

Looby