Parish records due to come online via NLI

[smcarberry]

An Irish gen. blog has posted this news:

"Friday, 29 October 2010
Next major online offering may be entire Catholic register collection

The National Library of Ireland (NLI) is planning to scan all 520 microfilms that make up its collection of Roman Catholic parish registers and put the scans online.

While they won't be transcribed (so genealogists will still be going cross-eyed and pulling their hair out with frustration at the many illegible pages of records) nor indexed, this step would be hugely beneficial. At present, family historians have to visit the NLI in person, and only one microfilm for each parish is made available at any one time.

So, while not perfect, having this resource online would be an outstanding advance. The collection represents, for the majority of researchers, the main source of birth, marriage and death records for pre-1864 (when civil registration started).

The project is still at the tender stage, so it's some way off, but scanning and uploading 520 films to the web isn't an enormous undertaking and should be achievable within a year from now.

Source: John Grenham/Irish Times"

http://irish-genealogy-news.blogspot.co ... ay-be.html

Note that due to legibility issues with filmed parish records, researchers will need to view a film itself or, better yet, the actual parish book. A scanned version of a film is likely to have a less clear image than the film. However, for quick analysis of a family across several parishes, an online version will be a valuable addition to resources now available.

Sharon Carberry
USA

[Paddy Casey]

A scanned version of a film is likely to have a less clear image than the film.

Sharon,

If a microfilm is scanned with state-of-the-art equipment the resulting digital image will be much clearer than that of the film. I have seen examples of scanned v. original microfilm and the improvement in legibility is startling. One also sees this when one scans old faded colour slides into a photo collection; with a few mouseclicks Adobe Photoshop (for example) can make silk purses out of sows' ears.

I've no idea what technology the NLI will use, of course, but would be very surprised if they were to simply scan the images without upgrading them.

Paddy