Category Archives: digitisation

Not Highly Rated

Posted on November 21, 2024 by Lifelines Research

The aim of this blog is to provide some background material relating to the issues raised in Episode 26 of my video series, Setting The Record Straight. The video and this accompanying blog take a look at an online database … Continue reading →

Posted in Archives, digitisation, Document Sources, Local History, research, Soapbox | Tagged ANcestry, documents, family history, family-tree, Findmypast, genealogy, history, Rate Books, Really Bad Digitisation, Westminster | 1 Comment

Outrageous … and must be utterly rejected

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Lifelines Research

RESPONSE TO OPEN CONSULTATION:STORAGE AND RETENTION OF ORIGINAL WILL DOCUMENTSPublished 15 December 2023 Introduction I have a number of significant concerns about the proposals outlined in the consultation paper. These concerns and my opinions regarding the proposals are based on … Continue reading →

Posted in Archives, digitisation, Soapbox | Tagged digitisation, documents, family history, original wills, research, the national archives, tna, wills | Leave a comment

A Star of the Silver Screen and… the 1939 National Register

Posted on January 19, 2024 by Lifelines Research

Just in case anyone ever needs to know, if you want to get my attention, you could do worse than sending me a message that says: Hi Dave. I’m doing a bit of research at the moment on the 1939 … Continue reading →

Posted in Archives, digitisation, Document Sources, Local History, research, Stories | Tagged 1939, 1939 National Register, Audrey Hepburn, Elham, family history, genealogy, Kent, research, the national archives, tna | 1 Comment

Wills Consultation Paper

Posted on December 17, 2023 by Lifelines Research

On 15 December 2023, the UK government published a consultation paper on the ‘Storage and retention of original will documents’. The paper can be accessed online here. At the same time, the government issued a press release backed up by … Continue reading →

Posted in Archives, digitisation, Document Sources, research | Tagged documents, family history, research, wills | 10 Comments

Transcripts and indexes

Posted on May 22, 2022 by Lifelines Research

The release of the 1921 census returns for England and Wales earlier this year led to some (fairly heated) discussion on social media regarding the quality of the transcription provided by Findmypast, the National Archives’ commercial partners in the online … Continue reading →

Posted in digitisation, Document Sources, research, Soapbox | Tagged antiquarians, census, digitisation, documents, family history, genealogy, indexing, research, the national archives, tna, transcription | 6 Comments

When Digitisation Goes Bad Part II: Death’s Apprentice

Posted on January 27, 2022 by Lifelines Research

or…Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back Onto The Internet This is the second part of a blog post looking at some particularly bad examples of digitisation in the world of family history research. In the first … Continue reading →

Posted in digitisation, Document Sources, research, Soapbox | Tagged apprenticeship, documents, family history, genealogy, indexing, london metropolitan archives, research | 1 Comment

When Digitisation Goes Bad Part I: The Night Of The Living Death Duties

Posted on January 23, 2022 by Lifelines Research

This is the first part of the latest in a series of blog posts looking at the some of the problems behind the way that we access family history sources via the major commercial websites. In previous posts I’ve looked … Continue reading →

Posted in digitisation, Document Sources, research, Soapbox | Tagged death duty registers, documents, family history, genealogy, research, the national archives, tna | 4 Comments