FreeREG - Live

Deployment of the Search facility on FreeREG has begun!

Rod Neep...

Congratulations Dave :-)
Its great to see it all come together. Its been a while since it was
just a twinkle of an idea. :-)

Dave Mayall...

It has been far, far too long in coming, and a profound relief to all
concerned to get to the go-live point.

It is, of course, not the end of the story, and there remains heaps of work
to do in taking the whole thing from where it is now to where it is going to
be in 6-12 months.

We already have lots of ideas for search enhancements and statistics (so
that people know what we cover), and we are hoping to get a considerable
amount of additional data online in the next couple of months.

John Cartmell...

An indication of coverage (of the area searched) at the point where results
are displayed, would be an enormous help.

Cheers
Rod

As mentioned previously, the basic search will be deployed gradually over
the next few weeks (to prevent server overload).

Lori...

Only one hour to go for me!
Everybody's hard work much appreciated - thanks

Serena Blanchflower...

I got access an hour or so ago :)

Only trouble is, I get a software error whenever I try to do a search
:( I have emailed details, as requested on the error screen, so I
hope it proves to be a simple fix...

Many thanks to everyone involved for all their hard work - it's much
appreciated.

Once the basic search has been deployed, work will begin immediately on
adding additional functionality until the search is as fully featured as the
FreeBMD and FreeCEN search engines.

At present FreeREG contains approximately 1 million entries, so there is a
huge amount more to transcribe, but time will sort that out!

Jill...

82 days before I get to see anything !!!
:~(((

Jill...

Oh -- I forgot

Congratulations -- and a sincere THANK YOU -- to all for their hard work
:~)

Saffy...

Only 4 days for me apparantly :~)

Lesley Robertson...

Dave, I was just looking at the required FreeReg formats to see whether the
(Church of Scotland) transcriptions I've already done can be easily
adapted, and I was surprised to see that the baptism section doesn't include
fields for witnesses. At least half of the baptisms I've transcribed have
specified witnesses and they can be informative. Are the names of godparents
not included in CoE registers?

Eve McLaughlin...

Once in a blue moon when there is an R in the month, provided it is not
a year of inhibition.
Seriously, so rarely, it is not worth raising a field for ch an entry.

Lesley Robertson

dave.newbury...

Can go in notes?
and as far as I can see, no godparents in Cof E, we do get them in

Lesley Robertson...

It's obviously a denominational thing - as I said, at least half of the CoS
ones I've transcribed have them specified.

Charles Ellson...

IIRC the statutory English baptism registers have no provision for
recording witnesses. Earlier freehand registers varied in the amount
of detail recorded with IME non-conformist registers tending to be
more informative.

Lesley Robertson

Baptist records, again in notes

Dave

FreeREG Project Manager

Steve Bamford...

Is there any information on the extent of coverage, as with FreeBMD?

John Cartmell...

What's the situation iro Lancashire?

dave.newbury...

There will be soon, I can tell you off hand STS has most, followed by
SOM, just over 30 counties have some data across England Scotland and
Wales

Dave

Ruth Wilson...

Great news that Somerset is at the forefront here, after fruitless years of
so little on the IGI, wills destroyed in the blitz, etc!
Are you working to include data from existing transcriptions in the
database, or is it all being done from scratch? i.e. will it eventually be
a 'one stop shop' for PR transcriptions (or as near as it could be!) just to
save looking (and occasionally) finding trancriptions in odd places on the
net?

Dave Mayall...

The project is transcribing registers, but will gladly accept donations of
previously transcribed registers

Ruth

FreeREG Project Manager