Page 1 of 1

Re: West Brom lookup if possible..

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 7:35 am
by MarkCDodd
D.o.V.E. was Digitisation of Vital Events.

It was GRO's attempt to provide a free online index that showed:

a) Date of birth and mothers maiden name (minimum, full name if possible) for all births 1837 onwards.
b) Matching of partners in all marriages from 1837 onwards so you don't need to guess which one of the people on the same volume and page is the correct groom/bride.
c) Date of death and informers name on all death certificates.

DOVE died in 2008 when they did not renew the contract with Siemens even though over 50% of the work had been done.

It has been revived this year under the name "Digitising and Indexing Project".

Another project called MAGPIE was going to allow the download of digitized certificates like you can do with ScotlandsPeople, some states in Australia and, soon, Northern Ireland.

That was shot down as well due to antiquated privacy laws in the UK.

The same stupid laws that stop me downloading WWII records in the UK and having to fork out 60 quid and wait for up to 2 months and prove who I am before I can see what my Grandpa did in WWII.

In Australia we just download the digitised record free of charge.

Re: West Brom lookup if possible..

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:35 am
by Northern Lass

Re: West Brom lookup if possible..

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 11:03 am
by MarkCDodd
Isn't it amazing what they have on Wiki!

I think IBM will win the contract and do the job a lot faster than Siemens could.

What IPS have not made clear is what data will be available to the public on the online index.

The Digger Indexes in Australia would be the perfect model.

But I get the feeling they are intent on making us still have to purchase certificates with not enough information.