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What do fifty-somethings do with all that time on their hands when they take early retirement? Head straight for the Family Records Centre (FRC) to research their family tree is the answer - as the AUKML tour group discovered on our visit on November 30. The FRCıs smart modern home in Islington was jam packed with amateur family historians with a very determined gleam in their eye. There is no charge for entry to the FRC which is open to everyone but determination is what you need to track someone down in what is still a largely paper-based system.
The FRC is split into two sections: the ground floor holds indices of births, marriages and deaths in England & Wales since 1837 (prior to that there was no centralised record keeping system, only parish records now to be found in County Records Offices) and for adoptions since 1927. The first floor has microforms of the Census returns from 1841 to 1891 and wills from south of the Humber from 1383 to 1858 (the Borthwick institute in York has the other half of the country). Wills after 1858 have a centralised index and are kept at First Avenue House, High Holborn) . Scotland has its own Record Office: the FRC has online access to the Scottish registration and census records for £4 an hour and a CD ROM index to Northern Ireland births since 1921 (many of the NI records prior to that were destroyed by bombing).
Around two thousand visitors a day use the facilities - more than 90% of whom are doing family research. Other uses include professional probate searchers who trace long-lost relatives of people who have died intestate and then tell them their good fortune - for a generous cut of the inheritance. Journalists also are intent on tracking people down and checking ages (sore point with actresses and teeny bands who turn out to be a lot older than they told their fans!).
Hatched; matched and despatched
Dominic Gattrell guided us around the ground floor. He explained that the FRC is staffed by civil servants working with a small team of archivists. The work of collating quarterly returns of certificates (from register offices and ministers of religion) of births, marriages and deaths into one index takes place at Southport (there is some time lag so records for the last year may not be available). 1.5 million records are created every year. All certificates are microfilmed and given a reference in the hard copy index. Only the indices are kept at the FRC - if you want to obtain a copy of a certificate; you must fill in a form; pay £6.50 and wait four days for it to arrive by post or for collection at the FRC (or £22.50 for an express 24 hour service).
Certain security checks are in place (some secret) to prevent the Day of the Jackal scenario where someone gets hold of the birth certificate of a dead child and uses it to obtain a false passport (one of the dangers of a system which does not match up birth and death certificates).
Each year is divided into quarterly sequences arranged by surname - so if you were born in February 1962, you need to locate the January to March volumes; find your surname and then your name (may take a while if youıre a John Smith!). Alongside your name is the Register office where your certificate was issued; your motherıs maiden name and a reference to the microfilm (but not your exact date of birth!). If you donıt know an exact date then it starts to get very time consuming... There is a computerised index to births and deaths from 1984 but apparently software problems have led to it being abandoned. Full computerisation of all the records held would cost £250 million...a worthy project one would think for the millennium, but at the moment the biggest funds come from the Mormon church who have religious reasons to trace ancestors of their members and have teamed up to produce a surname index to the census returns of 1881.
Adoption records are held from 1927: for adoptions prior to 1975 after which parents knew they might be traced, counselling is a requirement before children meet their natural parents. Around 50 new index books are added every year - the very old ones are vellum (treated sheepskin not paper) and are standing up to the punishment better than the newer books. A review of the registration system is currently underway at the Office for National Statistics and is looking at access rights and additional services such as offering information on support groups for new parents and the bereaved.
Making sense of censuses
Upstairs, Steve Cable showed us around the census and wills reading rooms. Here microfilms of the census returns (conducted every 10 years) from 1841 up to 1891 are available (there is a hundred year rule in operation - the 1901 census will be the next to be made public on the first working day of January 2002). In order to track down someone via the census, it is necessary to know where they lived as the returns are recorded by location. (Prior to 1841, names were not recorded systematically). Mormon volunteers have produced a surname index to the 1881 census (it took them 12 years). A current project will digitise the 1901 census and give access via surname, locale, age and place of birth and will also provide images of the returns. The indexing data will have to be input manually as character recognition is not feasible. Access will be available via the Internet. The digitisation of the 1901 census is the first stage in plans to give much wider electronic access to the census records.
This was a very enjoyable visit and most of us stayed on already fired up to start on our family histories
Further information:
FRC :Censuses and wills
1 Myddelton Street, London EC1R 1UW. Tel: 0181 392 5300
FRC:Births, marriages, deaths etc. Tel: 0151 471 4800
Susan Pryce; AUKML meetings representative
Email: susan.pryce@newsint.co.uk
Friday 14th October 1999
After most of the fifty delegates had registered, Professor Charles Oppenheim took the floor. In a brightly coloured shirt he welcomed us all to the Association of UK Media Librarians annual conference. As always he treated us to his quick wit and good humour.
The Kevin Connolly Memorial Lecture sponsored by Financial Times Electronic Publishing was entitled "The Scottish Parliament, Internet, Intranet and Extranets." Jane Seaton, Head of Research and Information Services at the Scottish Parliament started the evening off by describing how and why she designed and developed her department and its services. She then answered a plethora of questions, many of which concentrated on how she recruited her staff. I found her talk extremely interesting. It was exciting to hear about such a high profile organisation and the importance that library and information work has within it. The talk was followed by an excellent buffet meal, kindly provided by Lexis/Nexis, and much chatting in the bar thereafter.
Saturday 15th October 1999
Bright, early and somewhat bleary eyed, the day of the silent auction arrived. The silent auction was an idea Annabel Colley had brought back from her visit to the United States of America. The delegates, exhibitors and organisers had donated over sixty items. There were pens, pencils, books, pictures, mugs, shopping bags, signed cartoons and I think the funniest donation was a 1983 darts championship medal.
Each item had a bidding sheet attached to it, where a bid could be made by adding your name and an offer. The idea was to outbid names already on the sheet. This was brilliant fun, watching the information world be thrown into a frenzy over a couple of Dilbert cartoons and the Clinton Gore pencil was hilarious. There were dark rumours of an auction ring fixing the prices of some of the most popular items
Before coffee Annabel Colley treated us to an insight of the BBC Panorama Intranet. Annabel has set up a site that not only helps Panorama but also complements other BBC Intranet sites.
Lynda Iley then gave us an informative paper that explained the diversity of information she deals with on a daily basis in an unpredictable environment and how she and her team at News International try and prepare for the inevitable news stories in advance. For some reason disasters, murders and deaths are very popular.
We had time throughout the conference to look around the exhibition. SoccerScout were promoting their database system that includes player career profiles, a club directory and a complete league results analysis.
After coffee Jonathan Gordon-Till presented some methods available on the Internet to search for people and even gave us an example of a delegate who successfully traced her ex boyfriend. Sheila Webber then gave us a round up on how the find company information on the Web.
After a tasty lunch a panel of four experts Pat Baird -Mirror Group Newspapers, Alan Gibson Televisual data, Hazel Hall Napier University and Sheila Webber University of Strathclyde discussed the impact of the web and web based technologies of information users and information intermediaries. Each of them gave a short introduction and then the subject was thrown open for debate. A lively discussion followed with lots of ideas and opinions exchanged. From a students perspective, this was extremely useful. Several topics reiterated what I had already been taught at college from a theoretical perspective, while others provided new viewpoints.
Before the conference dinner we travelled to Glasgow City Chambers for a civic reception. After a short welcome from the deputy Lord Provost, we admired the paintings of former Lords Provost and then headed back to the hotel for the Conference Dinner. Writer and Broadcaster Bob Crampsey treated us to a very witty after-dinner speech. We then learned the results of the silent auction. Most items found bidders, with some prices reaching as high as £15. It was then time to retire to the bar
Sunday 17th October 1999
By about 10am twenty of us were on an open-topped bus touring Glasgow. This was really good fun if somewhat cold.
From a career perspective I learnt about many jobs and organisations throughout the conference. It has helped me to understand what the media sector has to offer. All the delegates I spoke to were enthusiastic about what they did and took pleasure in developing the service they provided. This was very encouraging as the current generations of highly motivated information professionals are paving the way for the future generations by educating their employers and promoting their services.
Thank you to the organisers for a highly successful conference. I learnt so much and had great fun. At college I have been sharing the wealth of information I gained over the weekend and am still name dropping about the important people from the well-known organisations I met.
Thank you AUKML for a thoroughly enjoyable, thought provoking weekend.
Miss Corrin R Weir
BA (Hons) Information Management
Queen Margaret University College
Edinburgh
EH12 8TS
e-mail: corrinweir@hotmail.com
As Harry Enfield would say I am a soft southern BLEEP (you may fill the bleep in as you see fit). Going to Glasgow, thatıs beyond the Watford gap, outer space, ainıt it. The atmosphere is cold, is it inhabited at all? With global travelling now the norm there is no need to go where southern man (woman in this case) has never gone before.
The AUKML conference had come around and I set off from home around 8am to start my journey to Glasgow. I meet my friends at Euston and board a train heading for the northern lights. I had no idea the AUKML Conference was such a big occasion or that so many folk were aware of the big wonderful world outside London.
Five hours later and we were outside Glasgow Central. We discovered that the 10 minute taxi ride to the hotel was a quick walk up the road.
We had arrived at the four star hotel, wow we really had made it. Well all the women in the gang anyway. My male colleague was banished to a non Feng Shui floor. Womenıs lib is alive, well and definitely kicking in Glasgow. Germaine Greer can stay in Oxford, or is it Cambridge? Women are doing just fine here - must be the freezing cold air gives them strength.
First we warmed ourselves in the bar and made the most of the happy hour then we all shuffled up to the Iona/Ailsa suit on the tenth floor to sign in and to lighten the load by handing our contributions to the silent auction and have a look at the other contributions so far.
On introduction we absorbed the warmth that Glasgow is so famous for. I felt I had known these people for years. What a gift they have for making one feel at home.
Straight into the Scottish Parliament Library. It sounded almost like the story of the two loaves and five fish. With enthusiasm, confidence, hard work and, of course, librarians the hungry politicians, researcher and the public were fed their information with lots more in reserve for desert.
I was then our turn to be fed and we all indulged on the delicious food provided at the hotel courtesy of Lexis-Nexis. It was an excellent choice and enjoyed by all. Then in true British style the majority of the men and a few of the women retired to a bar somewhere downtown deep in Glasgow and drowned most of their memoirs in their glasses.
Saturday, Annabel Colley started bright and bubbly, full of enthusiasm and confidence, describing how she trains journalists in the art of the science of Internet searching. She was so right when she used the analogy of the internet being like having a lorry load of books dumped into a library every few hours.
The conference was tailored made for IPC as we are in the process of training journalist on becoming the end user: all suggestions, tips and ideas were greedily devoured and stored ready to be put into action when back at work.
The day passed quickly and in no time at all we were sipping wine at the Civic Reception in the City Chambers. Networking seriously now and learning lots. Librarians are a generous bunch happiest when helping others.
Sunday morning and the bus tour around the city. Sitting in an open top bus peering out as the city rolled past made me think of what a good analogy it was for the perfect library.: old and stately, young and innovative.
Not having gone north before was my loss, I now realise. The climate may be harsh but the AUKML members and Glasgow more than makes up for it.
It's not all reading Hello! and rubbing shoulders with celebs. Fiona
Sanson of LWT reveals the traumas and rewards of a day in her life, and lets us
into the secret of how to become a millionnaire!
Bridget Jones - The Television Researcher of the 20th Century once said that she
used the company library "very often - to check the name of Prime Minister and
find out what year it is!"
Here in true Bridget style is a day in the life of a Television Information &
Research Unit. Sincere apologies to Helen Fielding!
No. of programmes working on: 27
No. of books / mags borrowed with my permission: 15
No. of books/ mags borrowed without my permission: 3 (really 2 cos caught one
half-way down corridor)
Simon cigarettes (4)
MONDAY
9.00am Lovely new Jubilee Line extension whooshes me straight into
Waterloo and the walk to the LWT offices takes all of 5 minutes.
9.05am Walk into reception of London Television Studios and have a quick
look round for 'famous telly faces'. Pretend not to, as staff, naturally should
be above this and unimpressed by fame. Flash security pass longer at security
guard than necessary while looking, but alas no well-known people in foyer this
morning. Maybe famous people don't have to do anything on a Monday morning-such
blues are solely reserved for normal members of public.
9.45 am Finish scanning the morning papers with Simon (my trusty
colleague and 'right hand man') and have general current affairs chitchat in an
'Eammon and Fiona way'. We now feel ready and able to face the oncoming
inquiries from all the telly researchers, producers and editors. Feel 'tis
important to be up-to-date with all 'worldly goings on' be prepared and ready
for anything.
LWT is divided into four main departments - Factual, Entertainment, Arts and
Drama. The Information & Research Unit serves all these departments and each of
the individual programmes within them. These programmes range from Jonathan
Dimbleby to Friday Night's all Wright and from The London
Programme' to Blind Date. There are also bucket loads of great
programmes for the future (alas can't tell more - confidentiality and all that!)
10.00am Check Email in-tray. New technology means researchers can now
contact us in a variety of different ways-sometimes by even coming into the
department. Email is a great way to disseminate information, usually as Word
file attachments - especially when researchers are in the Studios or on
location. Hurrah supporting 'paperless society'! Print off inquiry for our
records and look up Electoral Register for information required. Locating people
a big part of tellyland and the researchers love the Information Unit's Info
Disk and Electoral register online. Feel positive and gain inner glow once
helped Surprise Surprise team locate long lost family member-therefore
contributing to best bit of show!
10.02am Researchers and Producers in Information Unit are begging to
borrow newspapers ("I promise it will only be for 2 mins!") to read previews and
reviews of respective programmes. Others settle down for the morning with
Directory of British Associations and other such 'premier league' publications.
Glad to have trial of latest online database called Know UK-consisting of
diverse collection of Reference material including Who's Who and Voluntary
Agencies Directories. As Senior Information Research person feel it's important
to be on the lookout, try and test new products to give researchers greater
access to variety of publications in the most convenient format.
10.04am GMTV showbiz editor phones to request in-depth background
research into very very famous people she is interviewing in posh, top class
London Hotel. Simon and I have to research Grade A list of stars; feel excited
just reading names. Luckily subscribe to Lexis-Nexis. This database does
wonders in producing the full and comprehensive articles for the majority of our
requests. Love access to TV transcripts like Larry King and US coverage
as a whole. American papers invaluable especially when Jonathan Dimbleby was
interviewing the likes of Mr Amazon.com-Jeff Bezos - this summer.
10.08am Wayne our lovely postman delivers all our orders from Amazon.
This new ingenious way of ordering books has been a godsend to this busy two-
person unit. Able to order in books from UK and the States for programmes with
minimum fuss and paperwork. Amazon emails us when item is ordered and sent, thus
helps us have an a solid answer when asked for the billionth time "is our book
in yet?" "It has been despatched on Friday and is due in tomorrow" (in best
telephone library voice) is much more professional than "no not yet-but I'll let
you know!"
11.12am Finish researching Showbiz Editor's list. Nice to have the
opportunity to select relevant stories. Have watched lovely, glam, Showbiz
Editor's interviews on telly and thus know her style and kind of information she
is after. The Information Unit has a wide range of magazines in stock, which
complements online databases. Simon and I divide the titles every month and scan
the issues to establish content. Simon's not too keen on reading Hello!
or OK! Says he's not that bothered about being in tune with his feminine
side and definitely not interested in who is wearing what, to which Premiere.
He's more of a Police Review, New Yorker and Prospect sort of
bloke. Thank goodness researchers come in and work in department-can chip in on
big "What IS she wearing?" on the front-page celebrity discussion.
11.15am Hot date with Coffee Machine. Just about to pick up lovely
plastic brew when (The) Chris Tarrant arrives at machine. Oh crumbs! Famous
person alert and I wasn't even looking! Briefly ponder (while stirring sugar -
which never take) if should suggest that he adds a fourth 'Life Line' in Who
wants to be a Millionaire. Could call it 'Phone Information Unit' and media
libraries around the country would always know the answer. Therefore public
might have greater chance of actually winning a million. Simon and I have a pact
that we would be each other's friend in 'hot seat' situation and could easily
look things up in 30 secs! Realise Chris Tarrant is looking at me wondering why
I am staring at him, and my plastic spatula has completely melted in coffee.
11.16am Phones too busy, make mental note to tell Simon about famous
encounter later.
12.00pm Meeting with my Accounts Manager. Since new programmes are always
being commissioned Information Unit stock is constantly under review. Although
I might enjoy reading several titles, must make sure they are the same magazines
required by the staff. Hold a wide variety of super titles including, latest
American glossies Talk and George. Also cater to the conservatives
(although would ask for Jeffrey Archer's library pass back-if he had one!) and
stock everything from Private Eye, Newsweek, Time and
New Statesman. Since the department's shelf space is on the neat side I make
sure everything in the office is used on a regular basis.
Recently subscribed to Spotlight online-not only a more convenient way of
searching for the ideal actor but find that hot date too - (type in 6', blonde
hair and green eyes!) Oh also, helps safe vital shelf space for latest stock. <
p>
1.00pm Lunch-yummy sarnie from Artists cafŽ downstairs. Queued with
lots of young girls covered in glitter and wearing summer vests (despite being
November). Boy band must be in building somewhere. Eat sandwich at desk and
hide remote control handset to make sure SKY News stays on and not turned to
Neighbours by work experience gang! Funny though how people claim not to
have seen Neighbours since Uni but still know everyone's names! Staff
enjoy sitting in reading area and comment "oh it's so calm in here!" without
realising my email is going ten to the dozen, however Simon and I thrive under
pressure and happily work away. Must make mental note though how many people sit
on our oldish furniture and start IKEA campaign for the latest 'lounge chairs'<
p>
2.00pm Big, Executive meeting and demonstration in the Information &
Research Unit, with bosses to introduce them to the new Library Management
System. Have had this on wish list for some time. Proves very productive and
they heartily endorse it. Hurrah-what a difference that will make and good
publicity for the department when staff fully realise what a huge variety of
stock we hold. The Information Unit also has a full selection of all UK maps and
street atlases. Researchers have always been able to borrow any part of British
Isles, for location filming but alas I have had, on more than one occasion, a
map returned from a Hertz in Devon! Luckily am true Librarian and label
everything that isn't nailed down! This super duper new system will enable me to
bar code maps etc, book them out electronically and email the user and me when
overdue. The future is rosy, or maybe Chardonnay!
4.00pm Simon and I have an Internet chat (v. high tech!) and tells me
about the new websites he has discovered. Always nice when providing researchers
with requested information to add a little extra knowledge, such as good
website. A recent discovery was the Audit Bureau of Circulation, www.abc.org.co.uk that lists all
circulation figures for magazines and periodicals. Can wow users with up-to date
statistics at fingertips. Feel, as Information Professionals, we are in
premier position to lead the way and recommend tiptop Internet sites.
4.15pm What busy bees we are, especially as there are only two of us.
Afternoon slips by. Every other Media Library I have visited is a hive of
activity too. Indeed, I have never met a Media librarian who actually has time
to say shhhh! and other such silly stereotypes! Although I do own set of pearls
(only family and friends at Christmas dinner know this juicy fact.)
5.30pm Panic. Phone call from Edit Suite 1 Top Exec Producer (Robert
Redford lookalike) needs info /stats on single, sexy transsexuals in
Otterswick.
5.40pm Mmmm, can only find 3.
5.53pm RR phones, v. grateful but item has been dropped.
8.00pm Decide to call it a night-tomorrow is another day. Lift opens at
ground floor and I am blinded with TV cameras and artificial lights. OH OH! on
telly. ON TELLY!! Oh realise camera NOT pointing at me but filming Blind
Date couple in foyer, with suitcases departing for Bright Lights Big City /
Love weekend. Don't see any stars this evening-but hey ho there is always
tomorrow.
Lovely job - love my job!!
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