MAGPIE & DOVE's descendants

[wulliam]

Apologies if anyone has posted this already - but the following link is of some interest:

http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1090.htm

Apparently the digitisation of BMD records for England and Wales is back on the cards after previous projects such as DOVE & MAGPIE stalled and collapsed.

However, if I read it correctly, all we'll get is an official version of FreeBMD, with no online access to the certificates themselves. Perhaps the most we can hope for is that the index might include more info to help us rule some 'possibles' out.

[Guy]

On 07 September 2008 I wrote the following -

In 100 years the Government will have finally cobbled together the measures proposed in the January 2002 White Paper ‘Civil Registration : Delivering Vital Change’. This will include ‘through life records’ making family history research as easy as switching on a computer, or possibly recalling from the digital memory embedded in our brains.

In the not too distant future, say in ten to twenty year the old birds (Dove, Eagle & Magpie) will stagger into the air.

However some changes are in the pipeline (as previously posted elsewhere)

DoVE Digitisation of Vital Events
Will be renamed
OLDE DoVE Only Limited Deposits Emulating Digitisation of Vital Events

EAGLE Electronic Access to GRO Legacy Events
Will be renamed
BALD EAGLE Badly Accessed Limited Design Electronic Access to GRO Legacy Events

MAGPIE MultiAccess to GRO Public Index of Events
Will be renamed
LONE MAGPIE Lost Operations Negative Endurance MultiAccess to GRO Public Index of Events

On 23 Nov 2009 I added the following-


The above failed to mention the new initiative the Digitisation and Indexing Project or DIP for short.
DIP of course really stands for Definitely Impractical Proposition.


Should I be more optimistic?
Cheers
Guy

[Olde Crone Holden]

Guy

No, I don't think optimism is called for here!

The whole project has been an absolute shambles from start to finish. I wrote to my MP some years ago, asking how much this little lot cost and what exactly was the problem.

I never received a completely satisfactory reply about the cost - I was waffled with European Grants and so on.

I was talking fairly recently to a local Registrar and she said it is also a shambles from their point of view - the system crashes almost daily and they finish up having to write out certs by hand, then input them later in the day (or week).

I know that Scotland has only a fraction of the records to deal with, compared to those in England and Wales - but they managed to digitise their certificates without much apparent problem, why can't we? I have heard (or been told, can't remember which now) that Scottish certificates were bound into books in a different way from English, allowing the registers to be opened out flat and thus satisfactorily scanned and digitised. My humble suggestion to get roynd this problem would be to break the spines of the English bindings, shock horror, and rebind them afterwards, if necessary.

OC

[Guy]

Guy

Snip
I have heard (or been told, can't remember which now) that Scottish certificates were bound into books in a different way from English, allowing the registers to be opened out flat and thus satisfactorily scanned and digitised. My humble suggestion to get roynd this problem would be to break the spines of the English bindings, shock horror, and rebind them afterwards, if necessary.

OC

I can confirm that at least some (the ones I saw being scanned) Scottish registers were disbound for scanning.
Cheers
Guy

[Olde Crone Holden]

Guy

Thankyou! See, not such an impossible idea then!

The other interesting question, to which no one seems to have an answer is....what has happened to the images which WERE successfully digitised before the programme was abandoned. Are they being used internally at the GRO or not? If not, what a COMPLETE waste of money!

OC

OC

[Guy]

Yes they are currently in use as part of the Eagle system for requests from the public.
The scans covered births 1836-1934 & deaths 1836-1957.
Cheers
Guy