Good morning all, As Andy said, Scotland's People is a government website. Scotland is one of the few countries in the world who have put almost all their public records on a digital platform so that they can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You can't do it in England or the USA. If one knows what one is searching for, it is incredibly cheap. The search is free. Checking the records costs 1 unit and downloading an image of the actual entry in the records costs 5 units and then one can store the downloaded record for use as often as needed, printing out etc. No having to order it. No having to wait for it to arrive in the post. It happens instantly. As 30 units cost £7, careful searching will generate up to 5 images. That is a cost of £7 instead of around £50-75 if having to order them. I have personally downloaded over 100 family certificates. I have also downloaded wills written as early as 1610 and much more. I use Ancestry which happens to be utterly hopeless when it comes to Scottish records. Those who transcribed original records often get the names and place names hopelessly wrong. Family Search is full of entries which are no more than wishful thinking on the part of members of the Latter Day Saints church who have submitted them. Find My Past is just like Ancestry. Other than for the very exceptional entry which Scotland's People has overlooked or failed to index, there should not be records for Scotland which appear on the member websites if they relate to items covered by the Scotland's People site. Regards, Mark -----Original Message----- From: aberdeen-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:aberdeen-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Andy Sent: 31 March 2014 22:44 To: aberdeen@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ABERDEEN] ScotlandsPeople Hi ScotlandsPeople is not a commercial website, it is a Scottish Government website (note the url .gov.uk) operated by BrightSolid on behalf of various Scottish Government Departments. BrightSolid, as well as running its own commercial sites such as Findmypast and GenesReunited also manages IT services for a number of businesses and organisations including ScotlandsPeople on behalf of the Scottish Government. Andy -----Original Message----- From: Venita Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 5:25 AM To: aberdeen@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ABERDEEN] ScotlandsPeople Well said, Goldie and Sharon! At the current price for credits, and number of credits paid per image, it would cost me about $15 US to look at one record. Thats fine, if I know for sure that is the record I want, and Im not looking for parents or siblings of the individual in question, or for additional life events. For about $150 US per year, I can look at as many digital images as I choose on FindMyPast. I can do real research on FindMyPast, but not on ScotlandsPeople. It think its time for them to stop shooting themselves in the foot! Im for spending my money wisely - must be the Scottish in me . ;-) Venita ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ABERDEEN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message