Familiar with parish records?

[Rainbow Quartz]

Hi Darren
This sounds to be a very interesting and useful project. There are two parishes in Somerset/Devon which have done their own transcribing of their parish records and have put them on their local websites:
http://www.winshamwebmuseum.co.uk/
http://www.chardstockwebmuseum.org/
and I'm sure there are many more. There is also all the wonderful work done by those at FreeREG
http://www.freereg.org.uk/
but I am not sure of the relationship between these groups and organisations and the genealogy companies. It would be good if your pilot parishes could be those who have not transcribed their records for whatever reason, I imagine there are quite a few! I think it is important that your project avoids duplicating anything that is already out there. What would be really useful is a collation of exactly what records are available on line already.

[djmontgomery]

hi
yes indeed, that is me 

Is this you?  http://www.bhcgodalming.org/the-history-project/

[djmontgomery]

hi there
This is originating from the CofE, I work there as Special Project Director leading this initiative.  I'm very much still building my understanding at this point, but the idea would be to establish a standard simpler way for the church to deal with their records.  You're totally right of course that many records are held in county archives, but ultimately they're still actually owned by each individual parish so commercial partnerships ideally should take that into account.  Of course it's good if the records get online however it happens, but we feel the church could manage all this a bit more efficiently for the good of both the public researchers and the church itself.
That's the puzzle I'm trying to figure out 
cheers
Darren

Hi Darren

Out of interest is this a project originating from the C of E or did you approach them about it? The reason I ask is you say that each parish generally owns and keeps its own records but the majority of records (apart from ones still in use) are deposited in various County/Diocese Archives and it is usually these Archives that enter into discussions with or are approached by online websites. Have you contacted the various Diocese Archives?

Andy

[djmontgomery]

That's a good point, thank you.
Yes we'd certainly like to start with places that are not online already - makes sense.
cheers

Hi Darren
This sounds to be a very interesting and useful project. There are two parishes in Somerset/Devon which have done their own transcribing of their parish records and have put them on their local websites:
http://www.winshamwebmuseum.co.uk/
http://www.chardstockwebmuseum.org/
and I'm sure there are many more. There is also all the wonderful work done by those at FreeREG
http://www.freereg.org.uk/
but I am not sure of the relationship between these groups and organisations and the genealogy companies. It would be good if your pilot parishes could be those who have not transcribed their records for whatever reason, I imagine there are quite a few! I think it is important that your project avoids duplicating anything that is already out there. What would be really useful is a collation of exactly what records are available on line already.

[djmontgomery]

yes, that's correct in many cases.  Ultimately each parish does own its own records, so one thing I'm doing is trying to figure out how those contracts work.  Our goal is to improve it all a bit with some central standardization on the church side, how we do that is TBC 
cheers

My understanding is that Parish Records are deposited at various County Archives who by & large have contracts with one or other of the big online Genealogy Co's & as the records are owned by the C of E they would have to be co-partners so I'm not sure how the C of E go about releasing the whole collection to a third party for digitalization for online access without being in breach of contract.
Maybe you can give us your thoughts on that.

jim

[jim1]

The other question is, when do you stop.
The Data Protection Act will only allow records up to a certain date to go into the public domain.
After digitalisation has been completed you then have all of those records that are now outside of the Act while this is taking place that will also have to be digitalised & so it goes on ad infinitum.
So are you looking at a fixed term or a lifetime project?

jim

[Trancesgirl]

I am amazed that the CofE are finally seeing the potential here - May we ask is this project going to be free access or a pay per view one.  May OPC projects around the country are adding parish record transcripts to their sites for free.  Lancashire, Cornwall and Devon spring to mind as those probably most complete.  The Wiltshire site is a work in progress.  Family search.org also have the records online for free.  In the past when individual churches have been contacted about the records they still hold they have been reluctant to allow anyone to transcribe as they claim this is a source of income for the church itself.   What must be remembered that transcribed records are all well and good but can only ever be as accurate at the transcriber/checker.  The only true records would be images of the originals and this has not been acceptable by the various Diocese or County Record Offices as these records are also a source of income for the archives to enhance their funding to preserve other antique and historical documents deposited from other sources than the various churches in their county.