The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2001 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.UK National Burial Index on CD-ROM TWR Computing has announced the imminent release of the National Burial Index. Quoting from the announcement:
This very important data, never published before, indexes more than 5.3 million burials in England and Wales from 1538 onwards. It is not a complete index to all burials, but represents an enormous effort by Family History Societies and Groups to make available a large amount of information easily searchable in your own home. The National Burial Index, known as the NBI, is quality British data at an affordable price.
The information provided in the National Burial Index, taken from parish, non-conformist, Roman Catholic and cemetery registers,includes where available
- County of burial
- Parish or cemetery where the event of burial was recorded
- Date of burial
- Forename(s) of the deceased
- Surname of the deceased
- Age
- The society or group that transcribed the record
This information is displayed in a table, which may be sorted on any column. Records may be tagged and exported to other applications. The NBI does not contain full transcriptions of the burial records - it is simply an abbreviated finding-aid based on records that were sometimes difficult to read. As with the IGI, searchers are therefore discouraged from accepting the details of an entry at face value and should check the original source record.
Also included is mapping software that interacts with the data.
A bar graph is provided showing the count of people included in the Index for each year from 1538 to 2000. The programmer of the NBI is Stephen Archer, so a very high standard of product is assured.
Using the program supplied on the CDROM, the searcher can interrogate the database by a number of methods: a standard surname and forename synonym dictionary, a list of uniquely-occurring surname spelling variants, or by using wildcards. The search can be refined by specifying date ranges or locations.
To date, over 50 Family History Societies or Groups are involved with the project. Each appoints a coordinator who recruits inputters, checkers and correctors. Wherever possible, transcriptions are made from original source records but where this is not feasible other sources, such as microfiche transcriptions or printed registers, are used.
The number of burial entries included in the NBI per county, rounded to the nearest 1000, are:
Bedfordshire 52000, Berkshire 51000, Buckinghamshire 81000, Cambridgeshire 97000, Cardiganshire 6000, Cheshire 25000, Derbyshire 29000 , Dorset 1000 , Durham 170000, Essex 22000, Glamorganshire 249000 , Gloucestershire 151000 , Herefordshire 42000 , Hertfordshire 79000 , Huntingdonshire 58000 , Kent 16000 , Lancashire 29000 , Leicestershire <1000 , Lincolnshire 609000, Middlesex 11000 , Monmouthshire <1000, Norfolk 73000 , Northamptonshire 7900, Northumberland 106000, Oxfordshire 256000, Radnorshire 4000, Shropshire 85000, Staffordshire 14000, Suffolk 436000, Surrey 120000, Warwickshire 470000, Wiltshire 146000, Worcestershire 490000, Yorkshire 19000, Yorkshire East Riding 29000, Yorkshire North Riding 308000, Yorkshire West Riding 674000
TOTAL over 5.3 million entries
The minimum requirements are a PC with Pentium processor or higher, running Windows 95/98/NT/2000 or ME with suggested minimum of 8Mb, RAM. For screen resolution VGA (640 x 480) should work but SVGA, (800 x 600) and above is recommended.
The National Burial Index is 30.00 pounds inclusive. For countries outside the EU the price is also £30 including airmail delivery (the extra amount for airmail and the amount deducted for VAT cancel themselves out)
£30 is roughly the equivalent of $50 in U.S. funds. ($100 in NZ funds)
TWR Computing expects this new CD-ROM database to be available fo sale at the Federation of Family History Societies weeken conference on 20th-22nd April 2001. They are also accepting order at this time for delivery on or soon after April 20. Mor information is available at: http://www.twrcomputing.co.uk/nbi.htm
Note that the TWR Computing Web site does not have a secure serve for placing orders online. It is possible to order the CD-ROM disk by e-mail although most online security experts will advise you to not send credit card data in unsecured e-mail messages. Luckily the same Web site does list a telephone number, a FAX number and "snail mail" address, all of which are suitable for credit car orders.