If trawling through reels of census microfilm
in a windowless, airless basement in the old PRO or in a record
office, library or family history society isn't your favourite pastime,
why not browse through those records in the comfort of your own
home?
With the use of personal computers becoming more widespread, the
ideal solution to making the census records easily accessible to
the general public was to transfer those records from fiche (reduced
images of photographed documents) to CD-ROM.
One of the pioneers in this field is S&N
Genealogy Supplies/British Data Archive, a UK-based family-run
company.
The CDs are very simple to use
The census images can be viewed using the Adobe Acrobat browser
provided with the CDs. They are bookmarked by piece number, and
street or area indexes are also provided, enabling you to locate
your particular area of interest and the sub-district or piece number
which covers that area. Once images are displayed on your screen,
you can zoom in and out, move the image around, and even rotate
the image 90 degrees, something that can be useful when printing. |
