Find Your Family History at ScotlandsPeople: New Look and Free Content
ScotlandsPeople has a new look and more free features. Here’s what the makeover involves, and how customers of the former host Findmypast.com are affected.
Recently, ScotlandsPeople gained a new site host, after finishing its previous contract with Findmypast.com. ScotlandsPeople is the official Scottish government website for searching government records and archives.
Hundreds of thousands of people use it each year to research their family histories and access documents such as censuses, statutory and parish vital records, valuation rolls, wills and other critical historical records.
New on ScotlandsPeople
ScotlandsPeople has undergone its most extensive overhaul since 2010. It recently relaunched with several new features, including free content and services. Here’s a summary list taken from an article on the site:
- You can now search indexes to records, including statutory records of births, deaths and marriages, free of charge for the first time. (You will be charged when you view or download a record image.)
- The improved site design allows you access across digital devices.
- An enhanced search function makes it easier to locate and view records.
- New features include a quick search for people (across all records indexed by name) or the advanced search for specific types of records.
- You can now link to the Register of Corrected Entries from the relevant entry in a statutory register free of charge.
- Transcriptions of the 1881 census can now be read without charge.
- Indexes to births, marriages and death for 2015 and early 2016 have been added.
- You can now search coats of arms up to 1916.
- There are now more than 150,000 baptism entries from Scottish Presbyterian churches other than the Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland. More will be added in the near future, including marriages and burials.
- Over the next few months, more records will be added from the National Records of Scotland, including records of kirk sessions and other church courts.
Effect on Findmypast.com users
So, how did this transition affect Findmypast.com subscribers? Did they lose any access to Scottish records? No, says company rep Jim Shaughnessy: “Nothing is changing from a Findmypast perspective. Because of how Scottish records work, we didn’t have a reciprocal arrangement with ScotlandsPeople; our users didn’t get access to their records. We’ll continue to have the extensive Scottish records we already have, our users aren’t going to lose anything at all.”
Findmypast.com has Scotland’s census for 1841-1901, indexes to births, baptisms and marriages back to the 1560s, and some other collections. Click here to search Scottish records on Findmypast.com.
