7 September 2004
Major Local Records Electronic Cataloguing Project Launched
September sees the start of an exciting new project by MLA North West
(Museums, Libraries & Archives North West) and partners to convert 1000's
of pages of archive catalogues into an electronic form for the very first
time.
The project will involve converting over 23,000 pages of archival
catalogues from around the north west and will include church, parish and
local government archives - the type of records most popular with people
researching their family trees. Genealogy research is increasingly popular in the region and nearly 80% of all current archive users in the north west are family historians. The region also has the highest percentage of the population using archives in the UK.
One of the reasons for the huge growth in family history research has been
increasing access to historical information via the internet. When the 1901 census was put online nearly 30 million people tried to access it on the first day.
The Community Spirit data will be available online next year as part of the national Access to Archives project (A2A). The website - www.a2a.org.uk -
already holds details of over 7 million documents from over 350 different
archives from around the country with records dating from the 10th century
to the present.
By entering keywords, or using simple drop down menus, the site can quickly
search all the online records and the results include a description of the
documents available together with a reference number and the name of where
the original document resides. If you are then interested in studying a
particular record first hand you then simply click through to get full
contact details for the relevant repository.
Community Spirit is MLA North West's third A2A project having already
successfully completed Mills, Mansions & Cornershops (records of family,
estate and business archives) and Our Mutual Friends in the North (records
from co-operative and friendly societies, political parties and cultural societies). Both of these have already been extremely popular with the public and the north west is now the third most popular region for archive searches in the UK.
Beyond just records of baptisms, burials and marriages, Community Spirit
will also help unlock a diverse and fascinating array of other documents
including local government records relating to evacuation, the blitz and
the homeguard.
These will join some of the more unusual records from previous MLA North
West projects such as the archives of the Most Honourable and Facetious
Society of Ugly Faces 1743-1757 (a social club for less attractive
individuals in Liverpool) and the archive of Kendal's K Shoemakers dating
back to 1842.
Clare Connor, Chief Executive of MLA North West, said of Community Spirit:
"The enthusiastic response we received after completing the previous
archive projects indicates that the public are increasingly interested in
family and local history. The next step is to get the north west's thousands of church and parish records electronically converted and online.
Once completed, Community Spirit will enable anyone to quickly locate a
specific document with just a few clicks of a mouse and will help bring the region's history alive."
Janice Tullock, MLA North West's archive development officer added: "It's a huge task, but we're confident that by 2005 we will have successfully converted 23,000 pages of archival catalogues and this will then offer everyone the chance to begin researching family trees and other aspects of local history using the A2A database. Many people who want to use local archives have found the paper-based indexing complicated and off-putting, but projects like this are making the process much more accessible."
The project is funded by a £50,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Commenting on the grant, HLF regional manager Tony Jones said, "We're very
pleased to have been able to fund this project which will make these
important archives more available to more people. Hopefully everyone will
be encouraged to use the archives to learn about their local heritage and
their own family history".
The Community Spirit project team will be based at The Great Manchester
County Record Office and will work in partnership with 17 repositories
across the north west. The project is supported by MLA North West, MLA and
the North West Regional Archive Council together with the funding from the
Heritage Lottery Fund.
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