Findmypast

Findmypast

Type	Limited Company
Industry	Genealogy Online publishing Online services
Founded	2003
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Key people	Annelies van den Belt (CEO)[1]
Owner	DC Thomson
Number of employees	100
Website	www.findmypast.co.uk

Findmypast is a privately held UK-based online genealogy service owned by British company DC Thomson.^[2][3][4] It was the first company in the world to make the complete birth, marriage, and death indexes for England and Wales available online and for this was awarded the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2007.^[5] There are currently a wide variety of census, directory and historical record information available from across the English-speaking world.^[6] Findmypast has over 4 billion searchable records worldwide but, though it is possible to search their indexes for free, a payment or subscription is required to access the full data.^[7]

History

Title Research Group

Findmypast was originally formed in 1965 as a small group of professional and probate genealogists called "Title Research".^[8] In 2001 they started an online project, called 1837online, which aimed to publish copies of the birth, marriage and death register pages of the General Register Office (GRO). Another online project, FreeBMD, had already been working on this since 1999, gradually transcribing the indexes through the efforts of volunteers and publishing searchable indexes freely on the internet.^[9]

1837online

In April 2003 www.1837online.com went live online.^[9] This was a pay-per-view service allowing access to images of the pages of the original GRO registers. Initially there was no index of individual entries for the period before 1984, but subsequent years had already been electronically recorded by the GRO and were fully searchable.^[9] Gradually the UK Censuses, passenger lists, and other databases were added to the site, the first being an index of the 1861 England and Wales Census in 2005.^[9]

Findmypast

1837online renamed itself Findmypast because of its scope had spread beyond the GRO registers.^[8] The Queen's Award for Innovation was awarded to Title Research Group Ltd in 2007, for their provision of public, online access to the birth, marriage and death records.^[5]

In 2008 Findmypast (now purchased by DC Thomson and part of their digital publishing company brightsolid) gained a license to be the first to digitise and publish the 1911 England and Wales Census, which was added to the site in May.^[8] In 2011 Findmypast became sponsors of the Society of Genealogists in their centenary year and agreed a reciprocal arrangement where each would give access to one another's online databases.^[10]

Findmypast International

A sister site for Australia and New Zealand was launched in May 2010^[11] with findmypast.ie launched in the Republic of Ireland a year later,^[4] followed by findmypast.com in the United States and Canada in July 2012^[12]

Records

Of the many digital indexes and images, the website contains a number of exclusive records from various libraries and archives worldwide. As well as being the first to publish civil indexes & the England & Wales 1911 Census, Findmypast was the first to digitise the 1939 national identity register^[13] in November 2015. New records are uploaded weekly and announced on Fridays^[14]

Partnerships & acquisitions

Findmypast has collaborative partnerships with several prominent family history organisations, libraries & archives^[15] including the Federation of Family History Societies,^[16] the Society of Genealogists,^[17] FamilySearch,^[18] The British Library,^[19] the Imperial War Museum,^[20] The National Archives & the National Archives of Ireland.

In June 2014 they acquired two more family history providers, Origins.net^[21] & the US based Mocavo.^[22]

Findmypast on TV

Chris Hollins, the host of Find My Past with a descendant of Lord Canarvon

Findmypast began sponsoring the UK TV channel "Yesterday" in 2010. A new genealogy television series starting in October 2011, funded by findmypast.co.uk, was believed to be the first example of a product placement and advertiser funded programming deal for a factual TV series in the country.^[23] The UKTV series was named Find My Past and saw researchers using Findmypast's website and genealogical resources to discover people's roots and link them to key events in history such as the Gunpowder Plot, Battle of Trafalgar & Great Fire of London through their ancestors.^[24][25][26] Presented by Chris Hollins, the popular show ran for two series, won best Content Partnership at the 2012 Broadcast Digital Awards.^[27] In April 2014 it was announced that an American remake would be shown on Travel Channel.^[28]

The website is frequently used as a resource in the family history television show Who Do You Think You Are?^[29]

New user interface (2014)

In early April 2014, findmypast changed their website interface and received subscriber complaints demanding the return of the old site. The editor of Who Do You Think You Are magazine wrote: "Nothing annoyed people more than the feeling that they weren’t being listened to".^[30] Findmypast responded, saying they now had "a system in place to analyse all of our customers' feedback and make the necessary improvements as quickly as possible".^[31]

In June 2014 Family Tree magazine ran a three-page article on Findmypast's new interface. A Findmypast spokesperson stated, "The new search has fantastic potential" but "constant tweaks are being made to the site". They stated that they would extend customers' subscriptions if they were having difficulty. Family Tree responded that it "all sounds very encouraging... [but] the technologists had perhaps won out over the genealogists". The Family Tree forum administrator stated, "After wrestling with the new website ...for nearly a month, I was on the point of giving up... [but] I can now see that there are indeed many improvements and benefits". The magazine concluded by stating that "Many of our questions remain unanswered and we are still waiting to hear what findmypast has to say".^[32]

References