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Ideas for locating information for GENUKI

As time passes more local information is appearing on the WWW and once you know where to look its relatively easy to find it. This documents some of the main ways that have been found for locating this information. Of course don't forget the WWW search engines. If you search for a particular place name you will get lost of hits, but with experience you will find the types to home in on to get what you want. In particular the tourist/local information and local government ones are particularly useful.

The suggestion that follow are grouped by location in the GENUKI hierarchy, under the appropriate subject headings to use on the pages. N.B. The locations are those that contain information for anywhere within that area, it doesn't indicate where the link actually goes in the GENUKI hiearchy. Have a search round each link as some have quite a lot of information and its not always immediately obvious where to go.

UK and Ireland

Archives and libraries

England and Wales

Bibliography

Mike Harbach suggests:

I've added Bibliography sections to my Staffordshire parish pages by searching the on line British Library catalogue at http://blpc.bl.uk/

Here's my method which after some trial and error seems to pick up most of the available references:

Choose 'Search the Collection'
Choose the 'Older Reference Material (to 1975 only)
Enter in the Subject Phrase/Keyword field:
Parish, County (the comma is a Boolean AND on this search engine) (just entering eg Lichfield picks up lots of irrelevent refs to Lord Lichfield etc but Lichfield, Staffordshire refines the search) Begin Search
Repeat above for the 'Combined Reference Collections (1975-)

Note the on line collection is only available Monday to Saturday 04.00-2400 GMT

Civil Registration

Peter Abbott maintains the list of local Register Offices with links to each individual office. Complementary information has been prrovided by Brett Langston with list of townships and places in each district by county.

Societies

Local History Magazine have a list of local history societies for each county.

Lancashire

Church History

The C of E Blackburn diocese has details of all its churches.

General Hints

Look at Family History Society material, but respect copyright and don't just put them on the WWW. Look at their book list and for example under the Census heading put a list of the indexes published, and piece number, with links where appropriate to the society.

Find out where the Local Studies information is held, and add it to Archives and libraries.

Under Probate give details for locating pre-1858 wills (England & Wales)

Under cemeteries put details of all the cemeteries and churches which have or had graveyards. If you can get dates of when they were in use so much the better.

The old directories such as Kelly and Barrett are mines of useful information. They often have dates when churches etc were founded and other information specific to a particular town.

Page maintained by Phil Stringer.
[Last updated: 1st May 2003 - Brian Pears]