[#37045] Digitized Parish Registers

[Gjest Ingrid Seim]

Please forgive me if I duplicate a topic that already exists, but I cannot read Norwegian at all. I am looking for ancestors from the 1860s and earlier and I used to be able to understand Digitalarkivet's databases by using a Norwegian/English dictionary. However, I find it impossible for to read the original handwriting (the gothic, cursive script) in the very old parish registers. I would like to know if the new, digitized parish registers which are being added to digitalarkivet.uib.no will replace the old, searchable databases. Would the staff at Digigalarkivet consider keeping the old databases for people like me, who cannot read Norwegian?

[Gjest Frank Johansen]

The old databases will not be deleted.On the contrary more databases will be added as vouluteers around the country send in their contributions!And I believe there will be hyperlinks added from the database entries to the actual pages in the scanned curch records.

[Gjest Anette Skogseth Clausen]

Frank Johansen is absolutely correct. The databases made from the parish registers will never be replaced by the digitised images. The digital images are an addition. The images were launched in November last year and by 2008 1,85 million pages from the parish registers will be published. At the start of this publishing project the digitised parish registers are kept separate from the databases, but we are working on ways to integrate the images and databases, so when searching a database one can easily access a digital image to verify the information found in the database, and when browsing the images, one can easily access the database to read the transcribed text.There is unfortunately only a small percentage of the parish registers that are transcribed and published as databases. But we all hope that the new and easy access to digitised images of the registers will initiate transcription projects on a much larger scale than today.