Wednesday 8 July 2015

Catholic Parish Registers at the National Library of Ireland website is live

When Ireland gets something right in the genealogy world, it really gets it right. The new website, Catholic Parish Registers at the National Library of Ireland, is now live at http://registers.nli.ie - and having had a quick play, I now know I am going to have a few months of fun ahead!

The site offers access to the digitised microfilms of Roman Catholic registers held by the library, and on an all Ireland basis. Some of those microfilms are not of the greatest standard, and the records must be browsed, not keyword searched. But how it provides access to what is available, is fantastic. There is an interactive map allowing you to search parishes by diocese, and to search for individual parishes, the microfilm descriptions available list the contents (baptisms, marriages, burials) including a year range for each, and the viewer itself allows you to scroll page by page.

So far I am enjoying the site immensely - it's not just an amazingly useful research resource, it's also a toy for the happy genie. Below are a few screengrabs, but go have a play, and make up your own mind on what you see...!




A huge thanks to the National Library of Ireland (www.nli.ie)

Chris

The latest British GENES podcast is available at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/podcasts.html. For details on my latest book Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, and my other genealogy guide books, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

1 comment:

  1. I agree, Chris, this record set is fantastic! Although they are not indexed, if you have some idea of a Parish, they are very easy to scroll through, with zoom facilities. I think I may have found my elusive Irish great grandmother! Need to do a bit more checking to be sure. :-)

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