Repository for certificate contributions
Since 1983, I have been researching my family and have accumulated over 1000 certificates of birth, marriage and death from the UK who ended up not being the proper person I was searching for. One particular instance I had ordered a 1st marriage of my great grandfather in Neath, Wales between 1881-1888 but his first wife's name was unknown. There were 28 possibilities and I had to order them in small batches until I found the right one. This led me to having 23 certificates that I didn't need. These certificates hold no value to me, but I don't like the idea of simply discarding them. Could a repository be created where we can download a scanned image of what we might be holding on to, and index it so other users may benefit from them? I am cleaning up my files and am struggling with simply tossing these away. None of them are available for free anywhere.
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The family history / genealogy societies of which I have / had membership are always willing to add these to their collections. They would probably be more useful to a local society, so I would check out the contact details for the one that covers the Neath area to see if they are interested in taking them off your hands.
It is difficult to see how they would be of much use if held by FamilySearch, as (without permission) they would not be able to publish the details or images, so how would researchers ever be aware of them being part of their (FamilySearch's) holdings?
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Depending on the surnames, some members of the Guild of One Name Studies may appreciate having these certificates. On one-name.org the Guild has a surname search tool; if the surname is registered or a Guild member has registered an interest in the surname, the surname search results page will give you a contact email you can use to reach out.
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@HenryRoberts5 Thank you for sharing your idea. It has been passed on to the proper product manager.
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As they are UK records, perhaps the Society of Genealogists based in London may be interested.
https://www.sog.org.uk and https://www.sog.org.uk/about/contact/ Perhaps the librarian would be the one to contact.
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I don't know if it is the correct thing to do ...
I don't either - I'd have to read the 'contract' from the UK BMD Civil Registration agency... Which I don't have time for ...
You may want to check https://www.freebmd.org.uk/
which is a project to provide such transcriptions freely.
I think BMD record attachment in Family Tree would be covered by fair use principles - after all you did acquire them legally and are not profiting by such attachment in Tree (to the contrary you are charitably donating time and resources). If you contact FreeBMD it would be good to get a second opinion from such an organization.
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I like the suggestion of @donmthomas and have read that the GRO of England & Wales consider this is acceptable. However, I don't think there is an official line on this (nothing found in either FAQs or T&Cs on their website) and their reported attitude might just relate to the publication in Family Tree of records of our actual (close) relatives, so they just might consider wider posting of these images as an abuse of copyright.
@genthusiast I don't quite see the point you are making, as the original post relates to certificates, not indexes / transcriptions. However, there is a direct link to these from the FreeBMD pages if you copy the URL to Sources - this was not the case in the past: the link only led to the Home page of the website, as is common with the records of a number of other websites. Again - making checks as I write this - the libks are only to the references that cover the BMD events of the individual indexed - the images of the pages of the GRO indexes are in PDF form (i.e., no direct link).
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Yep you caught the gist of my point ... FreeBMD although a project for transcriptions does have some images. It might be a good project for HenryRoberts5 to review the purchased certificates versus FreeBMD - to see if some image exists for those... Or if charitable donations are accepted (the point of this Idea). The point being - here is an organization doing .. a long the same path as what this Idea brought up. It would be good for someone to get a second opinion from this organization - since they probably can readily supply an answer to the question of this Idea.
When charity is viewed as an invasion of privacy - the world is turned on its head - right is wrong and wrong is right...such is the sad state of our world - just don't let it extend to Family Tree please...
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There is an active Facebook group "BMD Certificate Exchange" that might be another option.
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