ScotlandsPeople Centre increases charges for digital copies

It has been a while since I used the ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk) computer system at the ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh (https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/visit-us/scotlandspeople-centre), but I have been alerted to a recent change of terms and conditions with regards to saving digital copies of the records when there. From the ScotlandsPeople charges page at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/our-charges:

To book a search room seat at the ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh costs £15 per day. You can view as many records as you like for no additional charge. Printing copies of historical records costs 1 credit (£0.25) per page and the same pay-per-view charges apply if you wish to save an historical record to your account. Credits are available for purchase in batches of 8 (£2.00) in the Centre.

I have highlighted the change in bold. It used to be the case that you could save a digital copy of the image to a USB drive at the ScotlandsPeople Centre for 30p at a time, but this facility was disabled some time ago. It now looks like you can save digital copies to your ScotlandsPeople website account - but at the same costs as would be involved if using the website from home, i.e. 6 credits which amounts to £1.50.

Quite why the ScotlandsPeople Centre has ramped up the charges for digital copies at its main records centre is for it to explain to their customers. In the meantime, you may wish to obtain paper print-outs when on a visit, at a cost of just 25p each...

(With thanks to Christine Woodcock)

Chris

For my genealogy guide books, visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html, whilst details of my research service are at www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk. Further content is also published daily on The GENES Blog Facebook page at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES.