Federation Of Family History Societies

National Burial Index

The Project

The National Burial Index (NBI) for England and Wales assists family historians find burial records and, in doing so, complements the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which is mainly a finding aid to baptisms and marriages. The NBI is becoming a national archive, giving worldwide access to sources held by those local repositories and family history societies and groups participating in the project. A cumulative edition is produced at approximately three-yearly intervals and a parallel project (not yet published) is taking place in Scotland under the supervision of the Scottish Association for Family History Societies.

Please note that the NBI for England and Wales does not contain monumental inscription records.

What Is Involved

Burial records are transcribed and computerised mainly by family history societies although a few individuals contribute records. These records come from different types of sources: parish registers, bishops' transcripts, earlier transcripts or printed registers. Data collection progresses by the use of a computer program (Shroud) which was designed for the project, or by contributing records from other databases converted into NBI format. Both methods involve each society appointing a co-ordinator who recruits voluntary workers and maintains a society database. Co-ordinators dispatch their records to a central computer for further checking and syntactical validation so that the index has a uniform appearance.

Family history societies choose the parishes and time intervals they transcribe although most started in the period 1813 to 1850+. This partial coverage is exacerbated because not all family history societies are able or willing to join the project due to problems such as a lack of volunteers or other commitments.

Progression

As an ongoing project, further collections of records are encouraged and continue to be received by the FFHS Data Manager. A substantial number of member societies that had not submitted records for the First Edition became actively involved and, as a result, the Second Edition was released in 2004. It is a set of 4 CDs containing more than 13.2 million records (including 5.4 million records from the First Edition) which cover over 8,000 burial registers from various counties.

There are still a few member societies whose work has only begun or where there are pressures on their voluntary workers who are still unable to undertake the time-consuming job of transcribing burial registers for this special project. However, it is hoped that they too will be submitting records in the near future.

Handle With Care

As with any genealogical index, please use the NBI with care. It is an aid to help you find where and when a person died or was buried. The source burial record often contains more information and it is strongly recommended that the searcher views the source record whenever possible. Alternatively, contact the society or group which extracted the information for further details - some may charge a small fee for this research.

Anyone who has undertaken transcribing parish records will understand the difficulties of recording the truth. Poor handwriting, semi-illiterate clerics, disintegrating paper and the ravages of time often lead to false interpretation of a burial entry. Do remember that the voluntary workers are not fully qualified palaeographers!

Unchecked Records

Initially, the NBI was to include only those records which had been corrected against the original source by experienced transcribers. However, such dedicated workers are few in number so that checking and correcting became a serious rate-limiting step. The majority of participating societies therefore agreed to permit a proportion of unchecked records in the NBI, providing these were indicated as such by the search program, and that all such records should be checked and corrected for the next NBI edition.

If you have any comments on entries in the NBI, you are encouraged to contact the relevant family history society or group. When you do this, please ensure you give full details of the original record as recorded in the NBI, the reference to your source, and the correct details you have obtained from that source.

Each place for which entries are included is annotated with the percentage of those entries that have been checked (and corrected where necessary). This is shown on the full list within the program itself.

Information The NBI Provides

The NBI includes the following information (where available):

• Forename(s) and surname of the deceased
• Date of burial
• Age
• Details of the place where the event was recorded
• The county where this is located (pre-1832 list of counties)
• The society, group or individual who transcribed the record

(The decision to exclude certain useful items of information from the NBI such as relationships, abode and occupation was a demand of most participating family history societies at the NBI planning stage).

If you want to learn more about how easy the NBI is to use, read what the reviewers have to say.

Computer Facilities Required

A PC with Pentium processor or higher is required, running Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME or XP. The suggested minimum specification is 16 MegaBytes RAM, around 50 MegaBytes of free disk space, and a screen resolution of 640 x 480 with 256 or more. Please note that we do not currently support the use of this product on any Apple Mac computer.

Security Precautions

In view of the time and effort given by volunteers to the NBI Project, it is only right that the FFHS took the precaution to minimise the risk of unscrupulous and illegal copying of which there were known instances. Security of the data has been accomplished both by using a digital signature on disk 1 as a stamp of authenticity, and also by adding a number of 'dummy' records to the database: these records are unlikely to be of any interest to a researcher, but will be clearly visible to our legal department should 'pirate' copying be suspected.

Purchasing the NBI

The latest version of the NBI can be ordered from GENfair at www.genfair.com

Installing & Using The NBI

Full instructions on how to install the program, start the Viewer and search the data entries are given in the comprehensive booklet inside the first flap of the CD pack (but please refer first to the section on the Licence Agreement at the foot of this page).

To All Contributors

The FFHS would like to convey its appreciation to all NBI co-ordinators and the hundreds of volunteers for their dedication, enthusiasm, and hard work which has made the two editions of this Index possible. Also Carol McLee as NBI Project Co-ordinator, Peter Underwood for managing the records and writing the Shroud data program, Peter Lord for transforming some of the larger databases and, last but by no means least, Steve Archer for writing the NBI Viewer program.

We Need Your Help With This Project

The NBI has proved to be a useful signpost to these important parish records and we hope this will greatly encourage hundreds more to continue this worthwhile work in the future and make the Third Edition even more valuable. If you wish to contribute in some way, please contact your favoured family history society.

Terms & Conditions of Use

We observe the requirements of the Distance Selling Regulations but you, in turn, have to agree to and accept the Terms and Conditions of the FFHS Software Licence Agreement before installation. By installing, you accept the terms and conditions of the Licence Agreement.

A copy of the Agreement, as below, is on the back cover of the CD outer sleeve, and on the back cover of the multi-flap packaging.

If you do not agree with the terms and conditions, do NOT open the packaging and do NOT install the NBI program. Instead, return the CDs within seven days in their original packaging to your suppliers. Only return it to FFHS (Publications) Ltd if you bought it directly from them.

Licence Agreement

Before installing this product, carefully read the license agreement between you and The Federation of Family History Societies and Associates (Licensors). If you do not agree with the terms, promptly return, uninstalled, to the place of purchase for a refund. If you wish to use the NBI in a public access facility, please contact the FFHS (Publications) Ltd before doing so.