Kirk Sessions

scooter · Post by **scooter** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 5:39 pm

I heard the Registrar General, Duncan MacNiven say on Digging Up Your Roots yesterday that the Kirk Session Minutes were online. Does he mean online at the Scotlandspeople centre (which has been the case for a while now) or is he hinting that 'online' might mean an imminent release on the WWW? rather cryptic I thought. Did anyone else hear this, what do you think?

Cheers,

Scott

Post by **emanday** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:59 pm

I know it was mentioned in the Scotsman back in 2005, but haven't heard anything since.

Post by **AndrewP** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:19 pm

This is a long term project, and I believe the final intention is that the Kirk Session records go online, but not in the near future. My understanding is that the digital imaging of them is still work in progress.

All the best,

AndrewP

Post by **emanday** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 9:36 pm

Thanks Andrew.

I imagine they will be as difficult to scan as the OPR's.

Post by **AndrewP** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:05 pm

I saw imaging of these taking place a couple of years back at one of the NAS outposts in Edinburgh. The process was to take three photographs of each page from the one camera set-up, and electronically add these together (either red-green-blue or cyan-magenta-yellow, I cannot remember which). Once the imaging of each volume was completed, the book was wrapped in vacuum-sealed plastic (I guess it was no ordinary plastic) and put into NAS's environmentally controlled storage facility for long-term archiving. As I recall, the output of this imaging was the same quality as we have seen for the OPRs.

The indexing of the Kirk Session records that I have seen at NAS (a few years back) is at parish and year range level, not at name level as we are used to for the GROS records. To find your people in these records, you need to know what parish and year range you are seeking, and then start reading through the pages of minutes of meetings of the Kirk Session. I am presuming this is still the case - can anyone who has viewed Kirk Session records more recently confirm this?

I have no idea what the intentions are for how to set these out for web searching and reading.

All the best,

AndrewP

Post by **emanday** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:49 pm

AndrewP wrote:The process was to take three photographs of each page from the one camera set-up, and electronically add these together (either red-green-blue or cyan-magenta-yellow, I cannot remember which).

Sounds as though they are using the same principal as is used for getting images "print-ready" for publication (my son works in graphic design). It ensures that all the colours and nuances are picked up. I'd imagine that, with all the differences in ink and paper colours and quality, that would be essential for the document scanning process as well.

If the plan is to permanently environmentaly archive the originals, getting the scans as perfect as possible will be a priority over speed.

sheilajim · Post by **sheilajim** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:58 am

Hi All

If the Kirk Session Records were on SP we would have been informed of it. I would like to hear that they were online somewhere. I would love to get my hands on them.

What would even be better is if they published them in some form or other. But I don't suppose that they would make as much money by publishing them in book form as they would by putting them online and charging everyone to see them.

If anybody hears anything more about the Kirk Session Records, please let us all know.

Regards

scooter · Post by **scooter** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 11:31 am

Hi All,

I thought that this was the state of play, and maybe Mr MacNiven should have said that these are online within the premises. Having seen the images myself last year on the NAS computers, I did think they were of very good quality, especially when compared to some of the nasty images on the scotlandspeople website. I also remember looking at some scanned valuation rolls too which were pretty interesting.

Cheers,

Scott

Archiver · Post by **Archiver** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:54 pm

Have a peek at this PDF - http://www.scottishdocuments.com/opImag ... ne0802.pdf

The main site is at www.scottishdocuments.com

Montrose Budie · Post by **Montrose Budie** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:39 pm

Archiver wrote:Have a peek at this PDF - http://www.scottishdocuments.com/opImag ... ne0802.pdf .....snipped.........

Note the questionmark against the start date for general online access of December 2009.

mb