The final scans for the Priaulx Library have been completed in internet genealogy giant Findmypast’s efforts to digitise Guernsey’s historical records.
Over the last 12 months approximately 30 terabytes of data – the equivalent of downloading 20,000 movies – has been recorded and uploaded from paper records stored across the Bailiwick.
Once reviewed, the records will then be available for anyone researching their Guernsey heritage anywhere online across the world for a subscription, or for free at the Archives and Priaulx library.
Capture manager Matthew Findlay has been working on the project for Findmypast in Guernsey since last February and was there to photograph the final outstanding pages from a book of hospital deliberation minutes.
‘On average I have been doing between 700 to 1,000 pages a day.
‘I’ve been working at three different locations, here at the Greffe, the Priaulx Library and the Island Archives,’ he said.
‘We are basically photographing pages and uploading them and it has gone pretty smoothly although a few times we have had to switch to a larger camera for the really big items.’
Priaulx Library chief executive Steve Foote has been one of the people co-coordinating the cross-island effort.
‘It has been a real collaborative effort between the library, the Greffe, archives, constables, La Societe and all the churches,’ he said.
‘I also wanted to thank Sark and Alderney, who brought their records to Guernsey to be included. We are still hoping to go live in April, and with the occupation ID records being available online just before Liberation Day, that is a real boost.’
‘Hopefully that will lead to made people visiting the island online and then for real when they discover their links to the island.’
Records dated back as far as the 16th century have been scanned, including births, deaths and marriages, baptisms, and burials – as well as a host of other sources including wills, cemetery records and occupation ID’s.
The images are now back at the team at Findmypast for quality control.
UK archives manager at Findmypast, Mary McKee, said that over the course of the year, her team had captured about 210,000 images from about 21 different record types.
‘We’re hoping that when we launch, we’ll have somewhere around 350,000 names from these records that everybody can search globally,’ she said.
‘We are at the final stage of the process and we can just spend the next two months really playing with it all, really getting to see the images and everything we captured over the last year.’
Four data developers and three operational team members have been working on the painstaking process of reviewing each record.
‘There’s no point in digitising all these records if you can’t find the people you want,’ she said.
‘Then we start the next steps with our own internal test sites, making sure that the transcription quality is good.’
Mrs McKee said she were really excited to start pulling together the stories they could find from the records to see how they could celebrate the people of Guernsey.
‘Liberation Day is going to be a key moment,’ she said. 'We’re excited that we were given the privilege to digitise the Occupation cards and the evacuating return forms, and especially those Channel Island monthly reviews [a newsletter produced in England to keep all of those that had been evacuated up to date with news of their friends and relatives].
‘They tell an incredible story of the Occupation of Guernsey.’‘ On average I have been doing between 700 to 1,000 pages a day.
‘I’ve been working at three different locations, here at the Greffe, the Priaulx Library and the Island Archives,’ he said.
‘We are basically photographing pages and uploading them and it has gone pretty smoothly although a few times we have had to switch to a larger camera for the really big items.’
Priaulx Library chief executive Steve Foote has been one of the people co-coordinating the cross-island effort.
‘It has been a real collaborative effort between the library, the Greffe, archives, constables, La Societe and all the churches,’ he said.
‘I also wanted to thank Sark and Alderney, who brought their records to Guernsey to be included. We are still hoping to go live in April, and with the occupation ID records being available online just before Liberation Day, that is a real boost.’
‘Hopefully that will lead to made people visiting the island online and then for real when they discover their links to the island.’
Records dated back as far as the 16th century have been scanned, including births, deaths and marriages, baptisms, and burials – as well as a host of other sources including wills, cemetery records and occupation ID’s.
The images are now back at the team at Findmypast for quality control.
UK archives manager at Findmypast, Mary McKee, said that over the course of the year, her team had captured about 210,000 images from about 21 different record types.
‘We’re hoping that when we launch, we’ll have somewhere around 350,000 names from these records that everybody can search globally,’ she said.
‘We are at the final stage of the process and we can just spend the next two months really playing with it all, really getting to see the images and everything we captured over the last year.’
Four data developers and three operational team members have been working on the painstaking process of reviewing each record.
‘There’s no point in digitising all these records if you can’t find the people you want,’ she said.
‘Then we start the next steps with our own internal test sites, making sure that the transcription quality is good.’
Mrs McKee said she were really excited to start pulling together the stories they could find from the records to see how they could celebrate the people of Guernsey.
‘Liberation Day is going to be a key moment,’ she said.
‘We’re excited that we were given the privilege to digitise the Occupation cards and the evacuating return forms, and especially those Channel Island monthly reviews [a newsletter produced in England to keep all of those that had been evacuated up to date with news of their friends and relatives].
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