Much has been written in this space, and others, about the revolution in the availability of genealogical records online in the past decade. There are more records available now, to anyone with a computer and reasonable internet connection, than at any time previous, and these records grow on literally a daily basis as more record sets are digitised and made available.

This week’s research tip is a relatively simple one, but nonetheless useful. With the ever-growing amount of information available online, now more than ever, it has become worthwhile to revisit websites that you may have thought you exhausted for useful information previously.

There are several websites which are worth keeping an eye on for new releases, below are just three examples of these;

Irish Genealogy (www.irishgenealogy.ie)

Irish Genealogy earlier this year released images of civil records for the island of Ireland up to 1921 (Births 1864-1915, Marriages 1882-1921 and Deaths 1891-1921) and later records for what would become the Republic of Ireland (Marriages 1922-40 and Deaths 1922-65).

The finish dates for these record sets are based on the Data Protection restrictions for number of years since the event (Births: 100 years, Marriages: 75 years, Deaths 50 years). Therefore, it is expected that each year, new records will be made available in accordance with the above restrictions. The site also indicates that it is working to make marriage records prior to 1882 and death records prior to 1891 available in the near future.

GRONI (geni.nidirect.gov.uk)

Similar to Irish Genealogy, the website of the General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI) has civil records for the 6 counties of Northern Ireland. It follows similar limits in terms of Data Protection restrictions, however the end date alters depending on when the search is undertaken, rather than a blanket 12-month period.

The GRONI system also has the early period available (Marriages from 1845-1881 and Deaths 1864-1891) which are currently unavailable on Irish Genealogy.

Find My Past (www.findmypast.ie)

Find My Past is one of the largest and fastest growing sites of material relevant to Irish genealogical research. As well as continually adding to its collection, the site has recently also included a very useful tool with exactly this kind of ‘revisiting’ research in mind. They have added a filter which allows you to restrict your searches to information that has been added within the previous 30 days.

By Expert researcher

Stephen Peirce