Genealogy Reviews - Practical Family History

Superior
online service

S&N is the largest UK based publisher and retailer of family history material and their rapidly growing online service - TheGenealogist.co.uk - is now amongst the top four sites providing British data online.

The service was initially founded by S&N to provide accurate indexing to complement the census image CD-ROMs being published by their British Data Archive division. Originally a volunteer-based indexing project, the volume of indexing required became too great for the work to be completed in a realistic timescale. Accurate indexes were wanted immediately by family historians, not in a few years time, so S&N set up a complex transcribing and checking system to cope with the rising volume of work.

S & N Genealogy staff at work

For friendly, helpful and knowledgeable advice on how signing up to
TheGenealogist can benefit you, along with information on S&N’s range of genealogy products, contact the S&N team at S&N Genealogy Supplies,
Manor Farm, Chilmark, Salisbury, SP3 5AF;
T 01722 716121; E via a feedback form on the website; W www.sandn.net

Accurate indexing

Realising that accuracy of indexing was what users wanted most, high quality commercial transcription from India is further processed in the UK, using a combination of sophisticated custom-written software, an experienced in-house transcription and indexing team and over 4,000 volunteer indexers. The latter have all signed up at S&N’s UKindexer.co.uk website and use custom online software to assist in the transcribing and checking of entries, working right across the world.

Data checking

Data checking is done in multiple stages, allowing the release of simple surname indexes to the census as quickly as possible for those with census image CDs or access to microfilmed census. The checking then continues to provide census transcripts that contain the information from all the major fields.

Once the transcripts are completed and released, the next stage is to link them

to online page images, allowing you to view the original of any entry you find. These transcripts are much quicker to use than an online service where downloading an image is necessary to view all the details, making it especially useful for researchers without broadband access.

Complete value

However TheGenealogist service is not just about the census; to help you find those important birth, marriage and death (BMD) certificates, it also provides one of the best value and complete General Register Office (GRO) indexes available if you subscribe to BMDindex as a single database. However, if you take out an all-inclusive subscription to all TheGenealogist data, you get BMDindex as well - plus much more - gaining access to the ever-growing collection of census indexes, transcripts and images, parish records, trade directories, land records and other useful genealogical material.

Easy, fast & accurate

S&N’s aim is to make using the site as easy, fast and correct in all detail as possible. To this end TheGenealogist search pages allow for wild card searching, as well as looking for surname variants and nicknames, and all the fields on the search form are actually available for use in the search.

TheGenealogist is a rapidly growing online service, with new material added

weekly that is instantly available to All-inclusive subscribers. So take a look for yourself at what S&N offers via their website at www.TheGenealogist.co.uk

genalogist.co.uk screen shot of transcript page

Census transcripts allow you to see all the important information before you need to download the image for confirmation.

The BMDindex GRO indexes to births, marriages and deaths from 1837 - 2003 are included in TheGenealogist’s all-inclusive subscriptions.

Census images are linked to many of the complete census transcripts, you don’t need separate CD sets.

Accurate indexing and linking and high quality images make BMDindex a top class GRO index service.