8th September 2006
One of the world’s leading genealogy websites has announced details of an “historic” partnership with Scotland’s primary and secondary schools.
The ScotlandsPeople Schools Project is a pilot initiative which will provide school pupils with a unique insight into the history of the nation and introduce a new generation of Scots to the growing subject of genealogy.
Schoolchildren will now have unrivalled access to over 50 million records which are available on www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk enabling them to piece together the strands of their family tree and view original handwritten documents, including wills and testaments, from some of Scotland’s most famous sons such as Rob Roy, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Rabbie Burns.
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LT Scotland) will enable the schools to access the site and will develop supporting resource materials.
Dr Richard Callison of ScotlandsPeople, said:
“When we launched ScotlandsPeople, it was our intention to introduce genealogy to a wider audience and help bring history alive for people. Working with LT Scotland we are able to offer schools unlimited credits for the website and as a result hopefully engage children and enrich their studies.
“Having successfully completed a pilot scheme with eight schools from across the country, we now hope to roll it out to every school in Scotland over the course of the next academic year.
“Genealogy has soared in recent years and by providing a whole new generation of Scots with access to historic records, some of which are over 500 years old, we will hopefully ensure that this trend continues.”
With over 50 million database records, ScotlandsPeople, which was originally established in 2002 by leading IT company Scotland Online in partnership with the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS), contains the most comprehensive online set of family history information for any country in the world and is currently one of the largest single information resources on the web.
The site is extremely popular with both home-based and exiled Scots from America, Canada and Australia who are seeking basic information on their background or carrying out in-depth research on their family tree.
With over 420,000 registered users, the website provides an easily accessible route to the unrivalled store of Scottish history which is preserved for the nation by the General Register Office for Scotland.
Amongst the material available are Old Parish Registers from 1553, indexed digital images of the statutory registers of births for Scotland, 1855-1905, the statutory registers of deaths for Scotland, 1855-1955 and the statutory registers of marriages for Scotland, 1855-1930. The Wills and Testaments are available from 1513-1901 and census data from 1841-1901.