New genealogy resources become available constantly. Organisations are always digitising and releasing new record sets to increase accessibility to genealogical information. However, January is the month when we regularly see an extra flurry of activity in this area. Why? Closure periods.
What are closure periods?
Closure periods are designed to protect the privacy of those still potentially living. You will most often find them associated with civil registration documents (birth, marriage and death certificates), censuses and other forms of population schedules.
The length of a closure period will vary from location to location and source to source . It is often in the region of 75-100 years to cover the expected lifespan of the people named within the document.
Finding new genealogy resources in the new year
The types of items which will have new releases at the beginning of each year are often not completely new record sets. They are usually extensions to core record sets already available. So in that sense, they are updates rather than ‘new’ and may, therefore, be quietly released without fanfare.
My advice is to know what you are waiting for and check the closure period. Make a note to check back when the required time has passed (the sign of a well-organised genealogist!). Some genealogy software programs can run reports on people who were born, died or married in a particular year, which may help.
Also, remember the release will likely happen first at the original source. It will then flow on through to updates at the commercial sites which licence these record collections too. Remember these are core genealogy record sets in most cases, and as such will often be (eventually) available at more than one site.
So far in 2020…
Here are just a few of the new releases I have heard about so far. This is by no means a comprehensive list. However if there is nothing applicable to your research here to check out, it might give you ideas of where to look for your own family tree requirements.
- 1939 Register (England and Wales) – 85, 000 new records have passed the closure date of 100 years beyond the given birthdate (or have been cross-referenced against a death record to ensure no living person is included). This means that almost 34 million of the 41 million records in this census-substitute dataset are now available to search.
- Irish civil registration records – the dates available have been extended. Marriage certificates are now searchable from 1845 to 1944. Birth and death records available have been extended by a year to include 1919 for births and 1969 for deaths.
- Scottish civil registration records – ScotlandsPeople have added births for 1919, marriages for 1944 and deaths for 1969.
- Archive offices – all sorts of documents reach the end of their closure period and are released by archives offices each year. These are generally more specific records and not as universally pursued as the core record sets. However, if you’re lucky you can find some absolute gold amongst them. As an example, here is what my state’s archive office released this new year. Check out the archives in the area your ancestors came from.
Keep an eye on your email inbox and blogs from your favourite genealogy information providers to see what they are releasing. I hope this year’s new genealogy resources help you to break down a brick wall or two!