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1 June 2005
Scottish Wills service transfers to ScotlandsPeople
website
The contents of the Scottish
Documents website have now been integrated into
the redesigned ScotlandsPeople website - http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/ - to provide a seamless and enhanced service to
family historians. Through this site you will
continue to be able to search the index of Scottish
wills, 1500-1901, view the wills of famous Scots
and use the research tools free of charge. The
benefits of the new site are its improved availability
and ease of navigation, together with access to
the records of our project partners, General Register
Office for Scotland and the Court of the Lord
Lyon. Most Scottish Documents customers have agreed
to transfer their accounts to the ScotlandsPeople
website. Customers who have not consented to transfer
accounts can still get access to any remaining
images in their Scottish Documents accounts until
31 August 2005. Instructions for downloading remaining
images can be found on the Scottish
Documents site. The Scottish Documents site,
along with the National Archives of Scotland and
SCAN websites will be redeveloped to offer new
services over the next couple of years.
3 February 2005
Scottish Archives for School
Micro-site Added
SCAN is pleased to announce
the addition to its website of a micro-site devoted
to the Scottish Archives for Schools (SAfS) project.
SAfS encourages the use of primary sources from
Scottish archives in the classroom, through the
publication of resources on paper and CD-ROM.
The project's partners are the National Archives
of Scotland, the Scottish Executive Education
Department, and Learning and Teaching Scotland.
On the SAfS micro-site you can:
- discover more about
SAfS resources and how they can be used to support
the school curriculum
- sample typical activities
from SAfS resources on Scotland in the 16th
Century, The Jacobites, Victorian Scotland,
Scotland 1901-1938, and World War II: The Scottish
Home Front
- find out how to get hold
of SAfS resources and other archive resources
for schools
- help SAfS, the National
Archives of Scotland and the Scottish Archive
Network plan future resources on the Web, in
print and on CD-ROM.
To visit the SAfS micro-site
click
here.
7 May
2004
SCAN
Final Project Report Published
The Scottish Archive Network
(SCAN) was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund
from 1999 until the spring of 2004. The Heritage
Lottery Fund has now 'signed off' SCAN, as having
successfully completed its project objectives.
Henceforth SCAN's websites and services will be
maintained by the National Archives of Scotland.
A report on the project was commissioned by the
Heritage Lottery Fund and this has now been published.
It should be of interest to other Lottery-funded
projects or those considering working with the
Heritage Lottery Fund.
Click
here to view the report >
1 April 2004
Launch of www.scottishhandwriting.com
Today sees the formal
launch of a SCAN website devoted to palaeography.
The new site is http://www.scottishhandwriting.com,
which aims to provide online tuition and regular
practise in reading the handwriting of early-modern
documents. The site began life as a small part
of the SCAN website and rapidly became one of
the most popular parts of the site. The launch
of the Scottish Documents site in 2002 increased
the demand for palaeography advice and, as a result,
the new site was developed, partly using content
from the SCAN and Scottish Documents sites, and
partly with new material in the form of interactive
tutorials and coaching devices. It has existed
as an experimental prototype since December 2003.
23 January 2004
Online Catalogue Updated
The Online Catalogue database
has recently been updated. The database comprises
about 25,000 entries. Many important collections
held by the National Archives of Scotland (NAS)
and the National Library of Scotland (NLS) are
now represented in the catalogue for the first
time, including Sheriff Court records (NAS), and
Advocates’ Library manuscripts (NLS). Some of
these entries will be in draft form still, and
will be improved as time passes. Currently, collection
description work is in progress on both those
institutions, and on Dumfries & Galloway Libraries,
Information and Archives. Further significant
additions to the Online Catalogue can be expected
shortly, including the completion of description
work on the kirk session records of the former
Free Church and United Presbyterian churches.
Other data is expected to be fed in for holdings
of university archives in Scotland in late January
and early February. To use the Online Catalogue
click
here.
23 October 2003
SCAN launches Online Catalogue
and Education Modules at showcase event
The Scottish Archive Network
launched its Online Catalogue at the Hub, on Edinburgh's
Royal Mile, on 23 October 2003. The event also
showcased SCAN's achievements over the past four
years, including advances in the digitisation
of historical records and the compilation of special
online education modules aimed at the Scottish
school history curriculum. The keynote speaker
at the event was the renowned broadcaster and
historian, Magnus Magnusson, pictured above with
SCAN's Project Manager, Rob Mildren.
23 July 2003
North By Northwest exhibition
completed
The exhibition about the
Highland Railway, featuring modern and historic
images, has been completed with the addition of
over 100 images of people and places connected with
the Highland Mainline from Perth to Inverness. The
photographs were taken by photographers from the
National Railway Museum between 1998 and 2002. To
see the exhibition click
here.
11 June 2003
SCAN and Scottish Documents
take part in Smithsonian Folklife Festival
This summer, SCAN's Joanna
Baird will be among the participants in the 37th
annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington,
USA. The Festival will include an interactive heritage
area where visitors can trace their Scottish ancestry
and learn more about performing genealogical research
with the help of staff from www.ancestralscotland.com,
the National Archives of Scotland, the General Register
Office for Scotland, the Court of the Lord Lyon,
King of Arms, and SCAN's www.ScottishDocuments.com.
Other highlights of the Festival will be performances,
demonstrations and educational programs from more
than 100 of Scotland’s finest musicians, storytellers,
cooks, craftspeople, dancers and scholars, including
the Battlefield Band, Phil and Johnny Cunningham,
Brian McNeill, and the Wrigley Sisters from Orkney.
The Festival runs from June 25-29 and July 2-6.
Admission is free. To learn more about the Smithsonian
Folklife Festival, visit www.folklife.si.edu.
1 February 2003
1000th entry in SCAN Knowledge
Base
The SCAN Knowledge Base
now contains over 1000 items: the target set in
the Project Initiation Document. Much of the content
for the Knowledge Base has come from staff at
participating archives, staff and volunteers in
the Internet Resources team, members of the SCAN
Users Group, and other researchers who have contacted
SCAN via the website. The Online Catalogues team
and Testaments team have also made significant
contributions over the last three years. The Internet
Resources team is grateful to all its contributors.
31 July 2002
Virtual Vault additions - Richard
Doyle's Highland Journal and Sketch Book from
the National Library of Scotland
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We have recently
added 4 new categories to our Virtual Vault
section. These include 'Diaries & Journals',
'Minute Books', 'School Records' and 'Medical
& Health Records'. One of the most fascinating
of these is the Highland Journal and Sketch
Book of Richard Doyle (1824-1883) from the
collections of the National Library of Scotland.
Doyle was a caricaturist who enjoyed a long
career as a book illustrator and watercolour
artist, and is particularly known for his
design for the cover of Punch magazine. To
go directly to this section, click
here. |
4 June 2002
Research Tools - Scots Currency
Converter added to site
If you want to add up amounts
of Scots Currency or to find out how these amounts
equate to Sterling then visit our new Scots Currency
Converter. Click
here to find out more. This complements our
new Knowledge Base entries on Money and Banking
and Weights and Measures. Click
here to visit the Knowledge Base.
10 April 2002
Launch of www.scottishdocuments.com
The Scottish Archive Network
are pleased to announce the launch of the new
Scottish Wills website - www.scottishdocuments.com
which was officially launched on Tartan Day -
6th April 2002 at Ellis Island, New York.
Phase 1 of www.scottishdocuments.com
will see the launch of the website and the free
index of over 300,000 “defuncts” in Scottish Wills
from 1500-1875 together with a host of other resources
to help users make the most of this fascinating
resource. Phase 2 - scheduled for May 2002 – will
see the introduction of digital images of the
original documents available for download upon
payment of a small fee. These will be made available
throughout 2002 in a rolling program of digitisation
culminating in the creation of around 2 million
high quality colour digital images. For more information,
go straight to www.scottishdocuments.com.
This website will shortly take
the place of all the existing Scottish Wills content
on the Scottish Archive Network website. Please
remember to update your bookmarks to the new site
as old links may shortly be redundant.
22 March 2002
New Virtual Vault entries
We have just added two new entries
to our 'Virtual Vault'- one containing Railway
Records and the other Poor Relief Records. The
SCAN 'Virtual Vault' is where you can see images
and transcripts of documents and is one of the
fastest growing areas of the SCAN site at present.
For Local History Week 2002 we will be adding
over 1000 images of documents from 12 of the local
authority archives participating in the Scottish
Archive Network. These will include Heritors'
records, school log books, tax records and diaries.
Watch this space to find out about these forthcoming
additions.
31 January 2002
Highland Destitution database
now online
We present a selection
of records relating to emigration from the highlands
and islands of Scotland in the mid 19th century.
These include a fully searchable database of 5,000
individuals who emigrated to Australia between
1852-1857 (National Archives of Scotland reference
HD4/5) together
with a selection of other relevant documents of
the period. As one of the few sources relating
to emigration held by the NAS, this series has
long been the subject of many enquiries from around
the world. Click
here to go straight to the new Emigration
section in the Virtual Vault.
18 January 2002
SCAN'S MILLIONTH PAGE!!
This week SCAN digitised its
millionth page of Scottish wills. For the past
year SCAN's six digital cameras, operated by our
project partners, the Genealogical Society of
Utah (GSU), have been in action capturing digital
images of the wills of Scots from 1550 onwards.
The cameras use the very latest digitising technology,
developed by the GSU for SCAN, to produce full
colour images of the documents.
The photo shows the millionth
image being captured, which is the will of a Banff
merchant, William Gordon, made in June 1741 and
registered in August 1742. Reproduced here is
the first page of the inventory of the stock in
his shop. The goods include brandy, gin ('Genevar'),
67 lb. of currants, a piece of velvet and a 26lb.
'parcell Tea in a Bagg'.
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