Scots Family welcomes ScotlandsPeople Centre, an integrated Scottish family history centre in Edinburgh

Scots Family welcomes Scotlands People Centre, an integrated Scottish family history centre in Edinburgh.
ScotlandsPeople Centre 

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  The launch of ScotlandsPeople Centre, the integrated Scottish family history centre in Edinburgh is delayed yet again - was to open April 2008, now maybe in June

ScotlandsPeople Centre - proposed integrated Scottish family history centre for Scotland
               Isometric Plan reproduced by Permission of ScotlandsPeople

 ScotlandsPeople Centre , the new Scottish family history centre , is intended to offer enhanced facilities for visitors,  improved disabled access, plus exhibition and retail spaces . Online and other facilities are being integrated to provide an enhanced service to family historians.

Scotlands People centre, the  name proposed for the  integrated Scottish family history centre for genealogy researchers, is gradually nearing completion in  Edinburgh.

 

Scotland's People Centre will be a 'one-stop-shop' for Scottish genealogy research in the centre of Edinburgh by bringing together services previously provided separately by project partners, namely the General Register Office for Scotland, National Archives of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon

 

 

Scotlands People Centre is intended to be a centre of excellence for Scottish family history, exploiting the prime location of the historic buildings within the heart of Eduiburgh , which are a tourist attraction in their own right.

Key benefits:

  • Enhanced online and off-line facilities for all users 

  • Creation of two new search rooms

  • Improved disabled access

  • Seminar and exhibition space

  • Retail space and reception area

  • New entrance at east of new Register House

 Scotland's People Centre : Duke of Wellington statue in Princes Street outside the National Archives of Scotland building

Scotlands People Centre-  National Archives of Scotland- part of the proposed integrated Scottish Family History Centre

The National Archives of Scotland's headquarters, General Register House, is one of the oldest custom built Government archive buildings still in continuous use in the world.

In  the mid-1700's the need to provide accommodation for the national archives was widely recognised. In 1765 a grant of £12,000 was obtained to carry out the work and a site was chosen fronting the end of the North Bridge then under construction. The eminent architect Robert Adam and his brother James were selected for the project. Robert Adam died suddenly in 1792 before his building was complete. The architect Robert Reid finished the design, including the interior in the 1820s
.

The programme of reconstruction was developed in consultation with Historic Scotland as both buildings have grade ‘A’ listed status. 

Until now, the main records which people could access as  as the basis for their family history searches were  held by three separate institutions:
* General Register Office for Scotland (GROS)
* National Archives of Scotland (NAS)
* Court of the Lord Lyon

They occupy the two key buildings – General Register House and New Register House – adjacent to each other at Edinburgh's  East End of Princes Street.

 

 

 

The integrated Scottish Family History Centre which has been named ScotlandsPeople Centre will continue the  work already advanced in creating digital images of the Scottish records, and online versions of indexes.

Staff will be able to offer a more comprehensive service to visitors, and so exploit more fully the visitor potential of these historic Register House buildings.

The main objective of the project is to create a Scottish family history centre at the Register House campus in Edinburgh which is fully integrated both behind the scenes, and to the customers who visit.

 

 

 

ScotlandsPeople Centre -  New Register House- part of the proposed Scottish Family History Centre

The New Register House site was acquired in 1859. The building was first occupied in 1861 and completed in 1863. The main feature of this building is the fireproof central repository, the Dome, which consists of five tiers of ironwork shelving and galleries – totalling over 27 metres high.

The Dome contains 6.5km of shelving upon which sit some half a million volumes. These include some 400,000 statutory registers of all the births, deaths and marriages in Scotland since 1855 and open Census records from 1841 to 1891.


Not able to visit Edinburgh anytime soon? Don't worry.
We are here now at Scots Family  to offer you a first class Scottish genealogy  history research service on the records of Scotland's people .
    


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