GRONI launches online civil records platform

I've just spent the day in Glasgow researching a family with connections to both Scotland and Ulster. The Scottish end is just about resolved - if only there was a handy online one stop shop for Northern Irish vital records?

Et voila! At long last, the new ScotlandsPeople style records site from the General Register Office for Northern Ireland is up and running at http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/family-history. I've just done a test purchase and so far so good.

You need to register with the site first, before you can begin. To do so, visit https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk/Account/Register. Once sorted, you can now start to search the records at the main platform page at https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk/

The site is inspired by ScotlandsPeople - but it is not ScotlandsPeople, the mechanics are quite a bit different. You can search for records and view records, but it appears that you cannot download those records. In fact, GRONI is quite specific about what you cannot do - if you right click on any record purchased, a message pops up stating GRONI prohibits the customer from printing images, downloading images, taking screen shots of images. For this reason, the only image I am using here is the basic search introduction page (I had hoped to show an illustrated walkthrough).

There are four search categories, including one that I was not aware was going to appear. These are:

Search for a birth registration
You can search for and view the record of any birth older than one hundred years

Search for a marriage registration
You can search for and view the record of any marriage older than seventy five years

Search for a death registration
You can search for and view the record of any death older than fifty years

Search for a WWII registration
You can search for any death from the period from 1939-1954.

And just to be entirely beautiful about the whole thing, GRONI have added a townland map facility for the whole of Northern Ireland at https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk/TownlandMaps.

I did a test purchase for a marriage record, to test out the workings. The basic search was free. When the results were returned - there were two possibilities - I could have spent a credit at 40p to see an enhanced result, but I did not need to, as both the grooms' full names and the brides' surnames were both displayed in the free search result, allowing me to select the correct event. That was good enough for me, so I simply purchased the full record required for just £2. I could use a zoom box to magnify parts of the record, though I have found this to be a little glitchy.

The record purchased was from Omagh, and was given a digital registration number of M/1880/Y1/2262/40/140 by GRONI. I'm not quite sure what the 2262/40 refers to, but the 140 is definitely the entry number. The original classification number for the centralised copy at the GRO in Dublin was Jul-Sep 1880, Vol 2 p.193, but I think I'm right in saying that GRONI's marriage records are actually sourced from local registration offices in the north, not the GRO returns - I will need to double check that!

Some down sides - the thou shalt not edict about saving a copy gets worse, in that you only have a 72 hour period to see the record once purchased - unlike ScotlandsPeople, there is no permanent digital copy saved in your account by the looks of it. Despite the instructions, I suspect that as a consequence the Print Screen button is going to find favour with the descendants of many Northern Irish ancestors. And one thing about ScotlandsPeople was its very name - how inspiring! A mission statement that became a brand! Whereas, until I find a name for the service somewhere, the NI offering appears to be the Research family history at the General Register Office (NI) GRONI Order a Cert section. I won't lie. The name's a passion killer...

Despite these wee niggles, the new GRONI website is affordable, accessible from home, and about to revolutionise family history across the water - one can only hope that both the GRO in Dublin and Southport are paying very close attention to this.

Well done Belfast!

Chris

Time to find your inner Irish...! All the best online Irish genealogy resources can be found through my book Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet - in print and ebook formats. "Very useful, makes me wish I was Irish!" - Saint Patrick, patron saint.