The first thing that I discover when I reach the top floor of the Mitchell Library, the Archives and Genealogy Centre, is a sign on the Gents toilet before you enter the Archive room. “Caution (in capitals) this door is liable to slam shut unless it is held”. This is not the only sign that gives me advice. When I entered there was a large notice that told me that there were problems with the heating system on the ground floor. This is the atrium where library users come to borrow books, use the café, work on a computer, come in from the cold after their walk, amongst many other things that the library provides.
I am here at the famous Mitchell Library to spend the day researching a line of my wife’s family, the Welsh family. This family has numerous members to search for, and I am aiming to research the records of perhaps twenty or more people today.
This library has been the centrepiece for students and readers and researchers for decades. I first came here in 1990 when I was doing a short piece of research on a social work topic that I was working on. Thirty-six years ago, it felt solid and secure with furniture and fittings that gave it a sense of meaning and learning intent. Lots of polished wood and many learned staff on hand to assist. Those learned staff still assist but the building is now looking in need of some loving care and attention.
The Mitchell has a small theatre which seats about two or three hundred people and I remember coming to it frequently during the Aye Write book festivals of the past. I’m uncertain if it is still being used. There are many other rooms that are used for exhibitions and events, but I don’t see many adverts for these events now. Things ain’t what they used to be, as the song goes.
I was made more aware of this last year in an article in The Bell, an online Glasgow newspaper run by some enterprising young journalists. I discovered that the building has insecure foundations which are continually exacerbated by the constant redevelopment of this area of the city centre.
I love the Archive Room. It has helpful staff who are knowledgeable about the material that might be available. I have used the Archive services on several occasions, especially when I was researching the history of my house. Great tombs of the Nether Pollok Estates that recorded the feu duties of the houses in my street were brought to my table by Archive caretakers who operated from the basement and brought records to the room on a trolley, thumping them onto my desk with a flurry of dust.
At the back of the Archive Room there is the Genealogy Centre which consists of twenty computer desks with good screens and keyboards on spacious desks and comfortable computer chairs. All very necessary if one is to spend the next seven hours searching the records of the National Records of Scotland (NRS) which is based in Edinburgh.
In its wisdom, the Scottish Government awarded the contract for developing a site to share the records such as birth, marriage, death and census, which are essential tools for family history researchers, to Find My Past initially and then in 2017 to a global technology company called CACI. The NRS run the site known as Scotland’s People as part of their non-governmental arm’s length service to anyone in the world who subscribes to it. Then you can search the registers. However, to view a record that you think you might wish to see, you must pay to view and to download a copy. This is achieved by purchasing several credits. Thirty credits will cost £7.50 and each record that you wish to see will cost six credits
What the Genealogy Centre does is provide access to Scotland’s People for a set fee of £15 for the day. For this you can view any record for no extra cost. However, you cannot save or print them. That is the downside. Researchers must take pen and paper or a laptop to record what they are reading on the records. The upside is that you can therefore make as many mistakes as you wish. For example, at home if you have made an initial search for someone called John Smith and it reveals a list of twenty or thirty people of that name and age, it is easy to pay for making mistakes by clicking on the wrong record that you are wishing to find. At the Genealogy Centre you can afford to make as many mistakes as possible in revealing multiple wrong records.
The Scotland’s People site is a good gateway into Scotland’s national records. My one criticism is that it has none of the power of search that something like Ancestry.co.uk has. For example, it lacks the power to throw up hints that are connected to the names that are being searched for, which would offer better value for money in preventing money being spent unnecessarily. That is another good thing about Scotland’s People. It is not a subscription service but a pay per view service, however there is a real opportunity here to deliver a better service that enables the amateur hobbyist to enjoy that process of research. On the scale of populations and records available in the different parts of the UK, Scotland could at least come up with a subscription service that is half the price of Ancestry.
My day in the Genealogy Centre was successful but equally frustrating. The information that I was inserting had to be changed frequently to arrive, sometimes by surprise at the record that I needed. The Welsh family that was my main interest had so many rabbit holes to explore that it was easy to get lost. Several names I could not find at all which was annoying because I could find their sibling’s records easily.
My next step is to create a family tree for them on Ancestry because there is a likelihood that others are researching the same family members and they could share dates and addresses that I am missing. Ancestry does not give access to Scottish records, but they do allow subscribers to upload images of records and other information which can then be shared with others.
And so it was, Williamina did have a presence on Ancestry. I was able to piece together some facts, namely that she was still living in her family home in Saltcoats in 1921 and the Census return describes her as working at J.C.Robertson Ltd. A quick Google search tells me that this company was a large firm of builders in Saltcoats. Later that year at the age of 23 she leaves Britain, alone, and sails to Victoria in Australia, alone, to work as a Domestic. I then found an image of a plaque dedicated to Williamina in a cemetery in Victoria. She died in 1986 at the age of 88. An electoral register of 1922 then informed me that she was married, her husband was Adam Bann. They had a son Martin Daniel Bann who died in 2011. I will prepare a story on Williamina, soon.
What I thought might have been a cul de sac in my search for Williamina Welsh became something much clearer after a collaboration between Scotland’s People and Ancestry. They need to amalgamate but I don’t see that happening soon.