FamilySearch News Release
27 March 2007
One
Million Historical Names from Canada Go Online
Nova Scotia Releases Early Birth, Marriage, and Death Records
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 t
axes, 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 over 4,500 family
history centers in 70 countries.