St Oswald RC - Liverpool Record Office

[Tex T]

I would like to look at a marriage which took place at St Oswald RC church Old Swan, and I can see from an online search of the Liverpool Record Office catalogue that the original registers are held there. However to see this I understand that I would have to request the item in advance. I would be happy just to see a microfilm copy of the register, is it possible to search online to find out if the Record Office hold a microfilm copy?

[Blue70]

Ancestry's Liverpool collection available in all Liverpool libraries has the RC marriage images for this church up to 1921.


Blue

[Tex T]

Thanks for letting me know, I didn't realise this church was available on Ancestry. In that case I can have a look at it in the library at Widnes. Thanks again.

[MaryA]

And just to give you an answer, I have not been able to discover any means of the catalogue advising me whether the particular record and year are available on film or in document form.

I have completed one of their "Have Your Say" forms and requested either a better informed catalogue or more accessible means of documents if, say, once arriving at the library it is discovered that the entry is not available on microfilm.

The response I got was that this would be too difficult to achieve.

There are two methods. Email (they don't answer the phone often) your specific query and let them respond to you before you make your plans. Alternatively if you are there early in the morning and are able to stay until the afternoon, I have found that the staff do try to be helpful and have had a document available for me at 1.00 pm, if requested in the morning.

[Tex T]

Perhaps Liverpool could copy what Lancashire Records Office provides on their website (which I am sure many of you will be familiar with)?

http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/ ... =30542&e=e

These PDF files are extremely useful as they tell you not only which registers are held there, but also which are available as microfilms, and whether transcriptions are also available.

Some work would initially be required to compile the lists, but thereafter any updating would presumably be very infrequent.

[MaryA]

That is a suggestion to be made direct to the Library, try a "Have Your Say" feedback about it please. http://liverpool.gov.uk/contact-us/have-your-say/

The more people who respond to this problem the more likely they are to think about a solution.

[Tex T]

Feedback form sent, I think!

What a slow system, with several minutes waiting while the next page to be filled in appeared on screen. Are they hoping we give up and don't provide feedback? The final (?) screen where it asked for the form to be checked and then sent must have been there for ten or more minutes after I had clicked to send, before it finally disappeared and was replaced by a completely blank screen. So whether the form was sent or not I have no idea. (And no, it was not a problem with my internet connection, I was able to do other things while waiting!)

[MaryA]

Sorry about that, I actually picked up the paper form at the library, but gave the link knowing you were not close enough to do so. You should hear from them shortly.

[Tex T]

I received an email today from Liverpool Records Office regarding the "have your say" form I sent to them. the content is shown below.

Thanks for your comment about the Liverpool Record Office catalogue. I apologise for this late reply but I’ve been away from work for a few weeks.

The catalogue does leave something to desire. This is a result of two problems.

Firstly, there is a technical problem. The catalogue you see online is the public version of a real time catalogue we have in Record Office. There are ongoing problems in trying to get the public version to display what we would like it to show.

The second problem is simply that we do not have the time or enough staff to update the catalogue, given the quantity of files we have.

I understand this can be very frustrating for a user trying to establish what our holdings of registers are. I would recommend that you contact us by email if you need any information about our holdings.

[Blue70]

Council services could get worse because of financial restraints over the coming years if the Mayor's fears are justified. The council could do more with Ancestry to make more of Liverpool's records available online.


Blue

[MaryA]

A much improved catalogue is desperately needed, a member of staff told me that it was an external agency who collated it, although whether any work is ever updated she didn't seem sure about that point, but probably not.