Jane wrote: > > *But* if those of you who have been to Ireland gave some thought to how you found research here - access in the General Registrar's Office for example, and compared it to access you have to your own records - I remember last year or the year before there was furore on the lists because the canadians were going to shut down or close access to the 1901 census or something like that? to Jane and list: This is an international problem. In Australia the Queensland Archive is being closed down, and any "important" archives sent to Canberra - a distance which makes a trip from England to Dublin look like popping round the corner to the local shop! The 1901 census for England Scotland and Wales, census will go online early next year. Sounds good, till you take into account that you will have to pay for access for 48 hours at a time, will get access to a name index only, and will have to pay a further fee for viewing actual entries (much like Scots Origins site) , so Heaven help those looking for the most common Irish names, like Mick Murphy or Paddy Clarke, as they will come up with thousands of possibilities with almost a million Irish born residents living in the UK before that time. There will not be the widely available (and free) access to microfilm etc., that there is for earlier census years - although even with these it may take a couple of hours travel each way to access local material, much longer to access the kind of material which is only in the Public Record Office in London - equivalent of National Archive and Library etc. in Dublin. Even in UK, it may take two days travel each way to access parish register records in County Record Offices throughout countries (assuming that they are available which is not always the case) and there are many parishes not covered by IGI for online research, or on LDS microfilm which is only useful if you are anywhere near an LDS centre. In some countries (and I think New Zealand is one) , census forms are destroyed as soon as the statistics are extracted, so there is no hope for local or family historians. So far as access in Dublin is concerned, running out of time and too many researchers is the main problem, as there is so much freely available material. In the Registrar's Office you need to have a great deal of small change, as you are only allowed to look at about 4 indexes at a time, paying as you go. There were queues from long before opening time. I ordered copies of entries and prepaid for these to be sent home. I received a copy of one of them, but not the other, wrote and asked for the second order to be forwarded, but have never had the courtesy of a reply, let alone the copy. At the Archive, the genealogy staff were most helpful, but the demand for reading machines is enormous, and again, I was there as soon as the building opened otherwise I would not have got a machine. After wading through many parish registers, I had still not found my Dublin family in pre 1860 records, or been able to link them with the Tipperary family. By the end of the day, I had not even touched the Monaghan and Mayo records, and could not visit again. Those who criticise the Irish Research centres may be interested to know that I received an excellent report from the South Mayo Centre on the basis of the information I had on my grandfather's 1859 baptismal certificate. This cost less than a return plane ticket, and goes into infinite detail regarding every family member, and associated lines, going back to 1805, with annotated sources which I can find myself if I wish, and I now have copies of some of these original sources. As a result of this report, I have now met cousins in Mayo and Galway, and have been contacted by others in Dublin, Mayo, London and USA, from whom I have gained the kind of anecdotal evidence that only comes from family members. As a result of the report I found my greatgrandparents' grave, visited the church where all the family funerals, marriages and baptisms took place, saw the original parish registers. I stood on their land, saw the view of the mountains that my grandfather saw every day for 20 years before he emigrated, and where my father's cousins continued to live. I was taken to see an elderly neighbour who had known these cousins in her childhood. It would have taken me many visits, and many years to find all this. As a consequence, I don't regard the service as expensive, although I have heard that some centres are better than others. Mary George nee CLARKE Researching CLARKE, COSTELLO, CLEARY, plus associated names GRIFFIN, MCGREAL, MCGUINESS, DOWD, (O')BOYLE, STAUNTON at Claremorris, Co. Mayo HEAD Dublin and possibly Tipperary, JORDAN, CLANCY, Co. Monaghan, MC NALLY Ulster, possibly Monaghan or Co. Down.