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One Million Historical Names from Canada Go Online
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Early vital records
of Nova Scotia, Canada, are viewable over the Internet for the first
time and for free, thanks to a joint project by the Genealogical
Society of Utah, FamilySearch™, and the Nova Scotia Archives
and Records Management (NSARM).
The records include one million names
found in birth records from 1864 to 1877, marriages from 1864 to
1930, and death records from 1864 to 1877 and 1908 to 1955. Users
can search the database at www.novascotiagenealogy.com.
Nova Scotia is the first province in Canada
to digitize all of its historical vital statistics and make them
available online. “This project provides key information to
researchers on their ancestors,” said Genealogical Society
of Utah regional manager Alain Allard. “It involves the vital
records — births, marriages, and deaths — which are
a key record set to find, identify, and link ancestors into family
units.”
The Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) first
microfilmed most of Nova Scotia’s vital records back in the
1980s. In 2005, GSU used FamilySearch Scanning to convert those
microfilms to digital images, while at the same time capturing additional
vital records with a specially designed digital camera. Volunteers
for the Nova Scotia Archives then used the images to create the
searchable electronic index, which was completed in 2006.
Anyone can now search names in the
index and view a high quality digital copy of the original image
online for free at NSARM’s Web site, www.novascotiagenealogy.com.
In the near future, the index and images will also be available
on FamilySearch.org. Researchers who want to obtain an official
copy of a record can do so online through the Nova Scotia Archives.
The cost will be CAN$9.95 for an electronic file and CAN$19.95,
plus shipping and taxes, for paper copies.
Nova Scotia Provincial Archivist, W. Brian Speirs,
said the cooperation of GSU was crucial to this important project.
“Without the Genealogical Society of Utah offering in the
early days of the project to provide complimentary digitization
of all the records as their contribution to the initiative, the
proposed undertaking would have been dead in the water and gone
nowhere," Speirs said.
FamilySearch is the public channel of the Genealogical
Society of Utah (GSU), a nonprofit organization sponsored by The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. FamilySearch maintains
the world's largest repository of genealogical resources accessed
through FamilySearch.org, the Family History Library in Salt Lake
City, and more than 4,500 family history centers in 70 countries.
© 2007 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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