Hi again Victor and Lin Although there are problems with scotlandspeople (its of the same stable as findmypast so no great surprise there) and extracting information from it, you do have to weigh up the pro's with the con's The census can be a pain to get to the right family in same cases but think back to how it could be done previously, the journey to Scotland or a paid researcher would be a whole lot more than buying some credits and searching from home The Pro's - if you are careful and use the free search to narrow down the possibilities you can get five birth, marriage or death registration (5 credits for five search results and 25 credits for five images at 5 credits each) and all from the comfort of your own home (as its 7gbp for 30 credits thats 1.40 per registration image, compared to 9gbp for an English cert) plus Scotlands registration system generally records more information than the English/Welsh ones (although it starts later in 1855) Using the census transcripts on Ancestry or Findmypast for 1841 to 1901 you can often narrow the people down to the right ones and then use scotlands people The Cons - the biggest problem is the stilted search engine which does not allow certain criteria to be searched for, clearly done to extract more revenue, although they deny that Later registrations can not be seen online (under 100 for births, 75 for marriages and 50 for deaths) but if you find one in that category you can use a researcher in Scotland who will transcribe the details for much less than a cert costs in England So there are two sides to it Anyone who is lucky enough to get to scotland can buy a day pass and view all they want to just paying for print outs Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) On 29/08/2012 09:11, Victor Markham wrote: > Lin > > Glad to see that I am not the only one who consider this rip off. > > As you said a credit is used to do a search and another five is used to > view the results. If there were lots of results involving more than one > page you have to use credits for each page you view. One also to be > careful as when you view the results it leads to a page with a tick on > inviting you to order the certificate costing 12gbp. I did order 2 > marriage certificates without using credits to view. The least they > could do is if you use credits to view then order the certificates they > could have offered to refund the view credits. No such offer was > indicated. Like I said I did not view but then knew they were the right > people and as things turned out they were.

From: Nivard Ovington <ovington1@sky.com> > Anyone who is lucky enough to get to scotland can buy a day pass and > view all they want to just paying for print outs< A few years ago I was fortunate enough to spend a few days researching at the General Register Office for Scotland in Edinburgh and what a fantastic experience it was! Of course, my wife and younger son and I made a holiday of it as well, also my expenses were largely met by the fee for a subsequent article in the former Practical Family History magazine (which sadly folded at the end of 2010). I did a lengthy series for the mag on famous family trees and one of my subjects was our former MP for Watford who was a Labour Whip at the time. Although she was born in England, both parents were from Glasgow and I was unable to do everything via ScotlandsPeople because the newer records, as most know, have time limits on them. Therefore, I had to go up to Edinburgh. My words, what an eye opener compared with the GRO for England and Wales! The Scottish birth, marriage and death records are simply wonderful, even though they didn't start until January 1855. As Nivard says, after you've paid the daily fee (£18 at the time, as far as I recall), you could then see everything (including the more recent records) and get printout copies of BMDs from the registers for just 50p. You don't need to buy the full certificates because the registers contain everything you need to know. Scottish birth registers give not only the full names of the parents but the actual date and location of their marriage, so you don't need to go searching for it. The marriage registers give the parents of both parties (mother as well as father) and death registers also show the parenthood of the deceased. I know that within a couple of days I had got my MPs ancestry back to a full complement of gt-gt-grandparents, a number of whom had come from Ireland. It may be more convenient to use ScotlandsPeople online (and I have no intention to getting into the debate about whether it's value for money or not) but I would advise anyone with Scottish ancestry to go to Edinburgh and the GROS just once in their life. And, of course, Edinburgh is a wonderful city for a holiday anyway! -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Famous family trees blog: http://blog.findmypast.co.uk/tag/roy-stockdill/ "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE

I forgot to mention earlier that Radio Scotland do a family history series occasionally, Digging up your roots. It is well worth listening to even for people outside Scotland because some of the things covered are of general interest. Their experts also look into a few queries from listeners. There is a bit of information on their website, during the series the podcasts can be downloaded so no problems with iPlayer for people outside the UK. The webpages for previous programmes still seem to be available. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007rv8d If you subscribe to the podcast then you should receive a link when the next series starts, probably in the new year. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/genealogy Martin Briscoe Fort William martin@mbriscoe.me.uk