Archives Unlocked, the vision for Archives in England 

Archives Unlocked was launched by the National Archives yesterday, 29th March. This is a compact, but important document: “IN SHORT: ARCHIVES MATTER. Our collections need to be used to be useful.”  This is not a new philosophy, but it has new implications, driven by three changes in the context of archives which have become more apparent over the last decade or so, and the last months. The technological and social context is characterised by the concern for digital and accessibility in the UK Digital Strategy section on heritage. This is joined by a concern for confidence in information in an era of false news, and the removal of old obfuscations and lies through examination of archival material.

The Vision document changed significantly in response to the changes we experienced particularly through the second half of 2016: the importance of access, particularly digital access and access to born-digital information highlighted when the importance of this data for confidence in institutions became clearer: it is not enough for the data to be preserved, or for it to be reliably transmitted, but also for it to be open and transparent.

This context leads to three high-level visions, for Trust, Enrichment and Openness, with case studies and think pieces for those who would like to delve further, and action plans for those who are involved with delivering the vision, in whatever capacity.

How Free UK Genealogy helps to achieve that vision (using the language of Archives Unlocked).

Trust

People and institutions trust in the quality of our type-what-you-see transcriptions as an authentic representation of archived records, supported by our openness about the limitations of a transcription, and the need for researchers to verify information. 

• Democracy and society are strengthened by enabling free, comprehensive, remote scrutiny of the archival record, holding institutions and individuals to account.
• Users have confidence in the integrity and authenticity of our transcriptions, and in the charity and its volunteers who support their research.
• We embrace the opportunities of technological change, ensuring confidence in both born-digital and transcribed records.

Enrichment

Our work enhances and enriches our society intellectually, economically and culturally.

• Our culture of knowledge and learning and our commitment to open data expands through new ways to discover and use archive material.
• Open data means value in businesses(1) can grow through the use of archive material to support change, innovation and efficiency.
• People’s lives are enhanced through their engagement with archive collections.

Openness

Free UK Genealogy cultivate an open approach to knowledge, makes archive records accessible to all.

• We aim to deliver an excellent user experience, enabling people to find, access and interpret archive records
• The rich diversity of society is increasingly reflected in our archives’ collections, users and workers (including volunteers).
• We are networked globally to maintain excellent practice and open new possibilities for institutions and users.

In some of these areas, we have almost 20 years’ experience as an institution, and huge experience as individuals.  In others, we have just started on our paths towards truth, enrichment and openness. The work plan will help us in that, and we in turn can help others in the wider archive world.

(1) One change between the consultation version of Archives Unlocked and the published version which we argued for was a fundamental shift from seeing ‘commercial’ relationships in terms of behind-paywall datasets: a wider vision of the contribution of archives to economic sustainability (as opposed to the contribution of business to the budgets of archives) is both more representative of the wider archive community, and fit much better with a vision for archives that has truth, enrichment and openness as its aims.  This is not to say that there is no role in this world for commercial partners who limit access: if they are providing enrichment that cannot be made by the archive or not-for-profit partners, they still have an important role, and will still be contributing to economic sustainability.

Quotations and adaptations from Archives Unlocked are © Crown copyright 2017.

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government

Camilla von Massenbach, founder trustee of FreeBMD (the predecessor charity of Free UK Genealogy and Free UK Genealogy CIO), and chair since its beginning in 2002 has announced her resignation as chair.  

Camilla together with Graham Hart, Ben Laurie and David Mayall - all still trustees - created the FreeBMD project in 1998. This was one of the first crowdsourced projects (the word 'crowdsource' didn't get invented for another 8 years - link is to the first use recorded by the OED). Rootsweb noted at the time "The FreeBMD project is expected to take forever probably, and the next 15 years certainly". Camilla was part of the management team, and acted as Scan Coordinator. 

By 2013 - the most optimistic estimate for completion -  the project had reached the 1960s for births and marriages, and the early 1970s for deaths. Today, we are rapidly approaching the completion of the initial target of all registrations to 1983. FreeBMD has demonstrated beyond a doubt the need for free access to genealogical data, and the ability of a volunteer organisation to achieve this.  

Two other projects which were started very shortly after FreeBMD, FreeCEN (which presents Census data) and FreeREG (which presents data from Church of England registers of baptism, marriage and burial, and similar sources) became part of the family, and the charity changed its name from FreeBMD to Free UK Genealogy to reflect its curation of all three projects, and its wider aims to advocate free access to historic documents.  

Most recently, on 1st January 2017, the unincorporated charity incorporated as Free UK Genealogy CIO, and Camilla will continue to serve as a Trustee.

For almost 20 years Camilla has been a thoughtful and supportive founder and leader of a visionary organisation achieving truly remarkable results. I am pleased to say that Richard Light has agreed to be our next Chair. Richard has been chairing the Policy Group within the charity for over a year, and has a particular interest in linked data. I look forwards to working with Richard in his new role, and continuing to work with Camilla.

Pat Reynolds

Executive Director, Free UK Genealogy CIO

We are happy to welcome Anne from Leaves Family History Research Service as our first Guest Poster. Here, she presents her musings on the new GRO pilot scheme.

A Brief Background:

There have been calls to improve access to civil registration records for many years going back at least 25 years.  Various Government papers looked at the issues, including a 1990 White Paper on ‘Registration: Proposals for Change’, but little if anything was ever agreed.

In 2002 the 'Civil Registration: Delivering Vital Change', report mentioned electronic access to ‘historic’ records could be provided by a ‘not-for-profit’ organisation.  The report may have been referring to FreeBMD, which had started to transcribe a few years before.  Between 2005 and 2012 there were several attempts to digitise and index the General Register Office (GRO). records, primarily the DoVE (Digitisation of Vital Events) and MAGPIE (Multi-Access to GRO Public Index of Events) projects, but none were completed.  It was not until the Deregulation Act 2015 that different ways of accessing historic civil registration records were discussed again.  This Act allows the relevant Government Minister to make regulations dealing with searching and supplying information from civil registration records held in the GRO. (1)

This month (November 2016) the GRO began trialling the first of 3 pilot schemes, allowing the purchase and emailing of PDF copies including birth records dated 1837-1934 and death records dated 1837-1957.  The purchase of marriage records are not included in the trial.  These copies can only be used for research, not for official identification purposes, as they are not certified. Phase 2 will pilot the delivery of the PDF records within 3 hours, and phase 3 the delivery of PDF copies of civil registration entries that are not held by GRO in a digital format.

The Searchable Index

To assist in the ordering process a free online searchable database was also introduced.  To access this you must register and login into the GRO website.  Unlike the original GRO indexes, which many family history researchers are familiar with, these indexes include the mother’s maiden name for most birth registrations prior to 1911, and ages of death prior to 1860.  Both of these will be a huge boost for researchers.  Sadly, the birth index only goes up to 1915, although the death index continues to 1957.  This means that in order to purchase a PDF copy of a post 1915 birth record, the reference details must be found on the FreeBMD website or other partner databases.  There is currently no searchable GRO index for marriages.

To search either index is easy but also surprisingly restrictive, as can be seen from the image below, and can be accessed via: https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/indexes_search.asp.

The search for names can be exact spellings, phonetic or similar sounding.  The names are also broken down into three parts, surname (which is a requirement), followed by first and second forenames.   Although this can be a useful feature there are issues if the person was not known by their 1st forename.  It is possible however to search without inputting any forenames, but a surname must always be included.

As the mother’s maiden name can also be added this can making the search for popular surnames easier.

The main issues with this search is that you must choose the gender (male or female, but not both), and a year, but you can only search for up to 2 years on either side.

An interesting omission is that you cannot search the indexes by county.  Currently you can either search by registration district, which can be restrictive if the family moved around, or by the whole of England and Wales.  

The search page for death registration is similar but includes the age at death (+/- up to 10 years) instead of the mother’s maiden name.

The Search Results

To try this new system, I decided to look for the births and deaths of some of the people in my family tree, and in each case I found all of them, despite some reports of missing entries.  In fact, because of the mother’s maiden name search, I found a couple of births that I had not previously found as they had been born and died between census years.   
In most cases when I searched for an exact spelling of a surname with no forenames given the results were displayed very quickly, although you have to scroll below the search box to see them.  When I requested a phonetic or similar sounding search, it could take up to a minute for the results to be listed, and several seconds to change to the next page.  Whether this was because of a long search or because the site was busy I do not know.
My main concern with the results in general, was that the quarters were listed by initial letter. M = March, J=June, S=September and D=December.  For experienced researchers this is not too much of a problem, but for new researchers it can be confusing, especially as J could be taken to mean January.  There has been some online discussion on various forums about the naming of quarters with some preferring 1st Qtr and 2nd Qtr etc., but my students usually find the JFM, AMJ formats easier to remember.

Another issue with the results is the lack of county.  I appreciate that counties moved their boundaries, but I needed to do an internet search to find that the ‘Lexden and Winstree Union’ was in Essex.  

An interesting omission in the results shown above is the mother’s maiden name for birth in the Blofield Union.  As this child is in my family tree I know he was illegitimate.  I searched for other known illegitimate births, where the father is not recorded and in each case the mother’s maiden name column is blank.  So this is a good indication of an illegitimate birth.

Early reports of the use of this database suggested that the deaths of infants contained errors relating to their ages.  Using known infant deaths from my own family tree I looked up several and only one gave the age as 0 years.  In other cases 15 years was shown instead of 15 months, and 1 year instead of 1 day.

The GRO have included a system to correct any incorrect or missing entries, as shown below.  The form opens in a new browser window and you are required to complete all of the details yourself.  There is no link between the record and the report, unlike the system on the FreeBMD website.  Whereas the FreeBMD website entries are linked to the corresponding index page, the GRO entries are not, so possible transcription errors cannot be checked.  

Ordering PDF Copies

Ordering PDF copies or the actual certificates is now easy. Once the record has been found in the index search, you simply click on the relevant option, which takes you to the order page where all the information has already been completed - you just need to make the payment.

Conclusion

It seems clear that the new GRO searchable index is simply to help researchers to purchase the correct record, rather than a general research tool. The addition of the mother’s maiden name is very useful, but tempered by the restrictive search of +/- 2 years and the male/female requirement, meaning that several searches for family members must be made rather than one inclusive search. The popular FreeBMD website will, in my view, continue to be a vital resource for the majority of general searches, especially as their double entry system can help to weed out transcription errors.

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References: 

[1] Fairbairn, Catherine. (2015)  Briefing Paper. Researching ancestry: access to civil registration records. Number 02722, 9 July 2015. Accessed online : http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02722/SN02722.pdf

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Update - January 2018

Anne Sherman of Leaves Family History is a qualified and experienced Genealogist and Tutor.  She can research your family history, help you with your own research or teach you how to start to get started with her online course, using free websites, including the FreeUK Genealogy sites. Anne was a transcriber for FreeBMD and now transcribes for FreeREG.

Early in August, I sat beside someone who was trying to use FreeREG.  He had no sight, so was using specialist technology to have the computer read the search page and results pages out to him.  As an observer, this process was uncomfortable to watch.  So much that was so obvious with sight became a hopelessly entangled muddle of odd words such as 'information' that meant nothing without the context of the box labelled 'First Name' that they were next to.  

We were at  The Shaw Trust having an audit of FreeREG so that we could know what work was needed to make the website easily accessible to all, and more compatible with assistive technology. 

I was very surprised that despite the difficulties he encountered, the tester was enthusiastic about FreeREG - he saw accessible family history websites making it possible to take up a hobby that he could do without waiting for assistance from family and friends.  

The experience of working with the Shaw Trust has made us think about things which were not in the original brief for the development of FreeREG, but which we know will make it better for everyone. We will be using what we learned to ensure that FreeCEN2, FreeBMD2, and this website are all just as accessible.  The 'free' in our names doesn't just mean access should be free of payment, but also as free of other barriers as we can be. 

For those with interest in the technical details: FreeREG is being evaluated against and brought in line with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. In the next few months, the site should be usable by recent versions of assistive technologies including JAWS (Job Access With Speech), NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access), ZoomText, and Dragon Naturally Speaking. It should also be usable by screen magnifiers and speech recognition software found on your operating system.

Also, early findings from our External Communications Survey are showing that researchers would like to see us use different formats to get information across, which would also help to improve accessibility. We are now looking into creating 'How To' videos for each of our projects, and Audio Transcriptions of our web pages.