Today I had a very productive two hour meeting in Glasgow with Anne Slater, Head of Public Services at the National Records of Scotland, to discuss my recent blog posts criticising the archive's current working practices, in particular from the perspective of working genealogists. I just want to say a huge thank you to British GENES readers who subsequently commented their experiences on those blog posts, to those who sent comments privately by email, and also to members of the Scottish Genealogy Network (www.scottishgenealogynetwork.blogspot.co.uk) who graciously contributed some of their experiences also. I was able to present a document to the NRS with many of these comments, which flagged up certain themes and issues which will be taken further for discussion. I would also like to sincerely thank Anne for her time in coming through to Glasgow for our conversation.
I can't really comment on the discussion we had as yet, other than to say that I did sense a very welcome will there for the archive to further engage with its user base. In the meantime, one bit of news that did emerge is that the NRS website at www.nrscotland.gov.uk, which has been hovering quite a bit in the background for a long while, is soon to be further developed, with the eventual aim of it replacing the two current sites for the NAS and the GROS (though these will continue to run in parallel for a while) with one single platform.
Chris
Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And please consider purchasing the great new version of Caledonia by The Libations at 79p via www.caledonia2014.com - all profits go to help fund Scottish foodbanks
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