Family History Courses

[Nigel]

I've seen courses advertised by Oxford University, Institute of Heraldic & Genealogical Studies and Open University. Has anybody done one and can say what advantages/disadvantages it has/had?

Nigel.

[Bob]

Not directly "courses" but I went to the National Archives "Catalogue Day" on Friday. This appears to be an annual free event where staff in various departments relate their progress on making the various collections more searchable and accessible.

At first, looking at the programme, I wasn't sure how it would help me, but I soon discovered that family history can be uncovered in a much wider range of documents than just censuses or BMD (Birth, Marriage and Death) records.

For instance, one of the areas being worked on is the records from the Courts of Chancery. The indexes to these reports have always been woefully lacking with records just described as e.g. "Smith vs Jones" which isn't going to help anyone to find anything, but now a small army of staff and volunteers are going through and adding much more detail which will allow these effectively lost (because that is what it is if it cannot be found!) records to be effectively searched.

So, the amount of work going on in the background to allow rank amateurs like me to find stuff is amazing - it's well worth examining the National Archives site again, now. Oh, and if you do, go down to the bottom and click on their "Labs" link which will take you into the "experimental" area where all the new stuff is trialled. E.g. they're trialling a whole new way of accessing their data. They're calling this "Discovery" and it was the subject of another of the talks. Basically, it's designed to enable more and more focussed searches to be undertaken across the whole range of available resources. Well worth playing with...

Bob