Hot on the heels of the changes to the National Archives website, the other main state portal for genealogical research has had a refresh.
ETA: 27/2 – several of the issues that I noted below are now fixed! Hence, I’ve removed or edited my comments.
Last week, I was in touch with IrishGenealogy to ask about the new year of records (we’re awaiting 1924 births, 1949 marriages and 1974 deaths) and if there was an update regarding the old death images for 1864-1870. This was the response I received (not signed with a person’s name) – I certainly wasn’t expecting a new website 4 days later.
This email addresses one of the main points I’ve seen mentioned on social media today: they aren’t loading the new year’s releases until they’ve tested the platform fully. They also blame the GRO for not getting the early deaths out, which is funny, because when I last asked the GRO, they blamed the Dept who controls IrishGenealogy.ie!
The new site has a fresh clean look and it works properly on mobile devices. The old site had two different landing pages for civil or church records but now they are combined into one search box. While this is neater, you do have to click more times to get to your search results. It’s also not as clear for a beginner what these different things mean. It’s still necessary to put initials in the Section 61 legislation getaround but there’s no annoying captcha anymore. The advanced options section brings more filters.
However, the bottom two of these (witness and sponsor) only pertain to the religious records, so it won’t show you witness on a civil marriage. This needs to be better defined.
Location is still by Superintendent Registrar District – I had hoped they’d change this to county. Not everyone understands when they put Cork in the box, that they’re only getting results from one of 18 districts in Co. Cork. Typing Dublin still brings up Dublin, Dublin North and Dublin South though. There also seems to be some coding error with Carrick on Shannon and Carrick on Suir, which I’m sure can be easily ironed out. In the help section, they rely on an external source for a map, which feels lazy, even though John Grenham’s map is excellent: IG should be producing their own map on the site directly.
After you’ve put in the search parameters, the results come a default of 10 but can be changed to 20 or 50 or 100 (this last has been added after my initial review went out). The filters are unchanged (by event, district or century).
Clicking on a birth return for 1902 from the above list brings a new page and a link to the image, which worked fine for me, but some people are reporting errors of the wrong record being linked. The pdf now opens in a new tab.
But if you click on a 19th century birth from the same set of results, you lose detail, as it no longer even displays the year of birth. The mother’s birth name was not in the index in the 19th century. This used to show “N/R” for not recorded and now says null. Hopefully this loss of detail is a glitch.
Something else I hope is a glitch is the additional spouse name in the advanced options, which right now is returning no results for marriages that exist.
When I first did this review, the death indexes were missing the age at death, as below.
But I’m happy to report this has been fixed (27/2).
And also what showed before with the lost of index reference and age at death, etc, has now been fixed too! You can see the before and after below.
The Genealogical Help section is much improved with lots of links and resources both on and offline.
Moving on to the church records section, here the witnesses and sponsors section does work in the advanced search but I did find in sample results that images are missing. This is also presumably a temporary thing they’ll iron out, but a nice addition is where there never was an image (for example, in St Andrew’s Westland Row), they now link you to the National Library’s image collection.
Similar to the census site, all the URLs have changed, so if you had saved a pdf link, it now doesn’t work. Personally, I didn’t tend to save these links. I crop the image and then copied the reference into a Word document when I’m searching, but I know a lot of people will be very unhappy about this. A Rootschat user has found a workaround here.
I hope this review is useful: I’ll add to it as I find more and do further testing. Please let me know if you find something and want me to share.
You now have to click back on the browser after viewing a record, (with information missing as you described, age, date of record etc.) to get back to the list as opposed to having a button or link on the page to bring you back.
We are losing functionality that was on the old site and there are too many clicks especially when you are going through a long list of possibilities due to a common name. Why open a new tab for an image as a default? I have too many tabs open as it is.
I also prefer a smaller text size that fits more lines on the page so you can scan the list easier. I have the same gripe about the new census site too, list only fits a few items on the page.
The image links are bad and don’t stand out, an icon would be better. I spend a minute or so looking for an image link that wasn’t there at all and had to report it but there was nothing saying that there was no image or giving an alternative text version. Is this how it is going to be, just no image link with no explanation? This seems to be a site that wasn’t tested enough by the people who would use it most.
We all get used to things and changes over time but dealing with two new sites in a week will take a while.
It is a lot to cope with, I agree!
Phil Stokes has stated what I would state. I have some records to look up, and tbh I have put this off all week as I found the new look frustrating and very slow to use. Often times I do not have a person to hone in on – eg I am looking for all Scott’s born in mid Co Londonderry in the 1800s and am focusing first on marriages of whatever Scott family member I can find. Not much fun with this! Was manageable before. I may resort to GRONI online as all research is NI but detest their four year blocks of searching and have avoided much of my research being done on that site by reverting to irishgeneaology.ie up to about 1918 with great success. As they say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!
I agree it’s not as quick to skim through. Send the feedback to them at genealogy@tcagsm.gov.ie – they are responding to it.
Thanks for the info. Using the previous search format for Baptism records was rather easy to apply filters like Mother’s first and last names as well as father’s names. Now there is only a filter for Mother’s first names for civil birth records. This makes it nearly impossible to quickly sort through the Baptism records. Am I missing something? I also dearly miss the ability to hover over the index and get the information rather than opening in a new tab.
It’s definitely not as quick to search. I advise sending them this feedback at genealogy@tcagsm.gov.ie
Totally agree, the new version is a huge step backwards. I find it truly awful .
Hello Claire,
Daniel is perfectly correct. I too may be missing something, because I found the previous search format for Baptism records much better. When you could search using the childrens surname, the fathers first and last name, the mothers first and maiden name. This gave you a list of individual childrens names which you could check by hovering the cursor over each named child and get the full information without having to open each and every entry. It was a very useful facility. With the new screen I get a blank screen if I try this approach or am I missing something!!!
Yes, they’ve taken away the pop-up function. It’s a pity.
Hi Claire,
There is some strange behaviour that catches you out at first. First is that the “advanced options” are only temporary – if you go back, they’re gone and you have to enter them again. Also, the parameters in the advanced options rely on the data being indexed, which isn’t always the case.
Second: sometimes the “MC” prefix is indexed as a separate word. So (for example) searching for McAleese doesn’t find entries that are indexed as “MC ALEESE”.
On the plus side: searching for “aleese” (for example) finds the “Mc Aleese” entries. And you can use * as a wildcard.
Disclaimer – I never found the old site useful. I’ve started using it since I discovered that it has images of the civil registration documents. For the parish registers, findmypast is better, and also free.
I’ve noticed the new year of records (1924 births, 1949 marriages and 1974 deaths) can now be searched, but the images are not available yet…
They’re there now!
I know I’m searching for a needle in a haystack as this family is my major brick wall, but is it possible to get marriage results from as general input as “Hunter”, “father’s name James Hunter”, and “father’s occupation Clerk of the Manor Court” ? Time frame anything from 1830 to say 1870? Area most likely Co Antrim or Co Down. I’ve tried but not sure if I’m supposed to log in though can’t see anywhere to do so or create account.
Hi Alison,
You will need to look at parish registers for most of the period you’re interested in. The civil records will only cover marriages for non-Catholics from 1845 & Catholics from 1864. You can’t search by father’s name on Irishgenealogy.ie. If you use Rootsireland.ie, which is a subscription site, they do have civil records transcribed for Down and Antrim, and you can search for a father’s name there. Try that.
I do find having to open the image in a new window a step backwards (as already stated). Also why are all the Civil birth records up to about 1899/1900 say Mother’s Name N/R when it is included on the record? Do you know if there are any plans to add this to the search – it would be really useful. Also adding the father’s name to the Marriage Search on Civil Records would be useful. Both of these would save us lots of time.
The reason it says N/R is because the index as originally created did not have this information in it until later in the 20th century. The GRO staff have manually backfilled the mother’s birth name into the index to 1900, and in some cases earlier if an entry has been amended or reordered. However, it is very time-consuming to manually check each name and then add it. Similarly, the marriage index never contained fathers’ names. I think it is highly unlikely to ever be done. If you have a subscription to Rootsireland.ie, some counties have transcribed the civil records and you can search by parents, etc. Each section of Rootsireland is its own franchise so they are not uniform in which records are available.