The Origins Network has announced that several projects related to the National Wills Index (NWI) are currently underway. These include the digitisation of all the British Record Society (BRS) indexes, including some not yet published.
The Origins Network says: “Records which will be added to the National Wills Index over the next few months include:
- Prerogative & Exchequer Court of York, index,1688-1731 [May 2010]
- Oxfordshire Probate Records, index, 1516-1857 [June 2010]
- Oxfordshire Probate Records, images, 1516-1857 [3rd quarter 2010]
- Hertfordshire Probate Records, index, 1415-1858 [June 2010]
- Prerogative Court of Canterbury Administrations, index, 1581-1700 [autumn 2010]
- Stow [Lincolnshire] Inventories Index, 1660-1700 [autumn 2010]
plus data from many BRS volumes and other sources. In all cases we intend to offer access to the original documents, initially via hard copy services provided by the relevant archive, and later via digitised images. NWI is a major on-going project and new material will be added regularly over several years, and as new members join the project.
Ireland
“We plan to introduce a National Wills Index for Ireland later this year. Currently there are index records to over 40,000 Irish wills in the Origins Network’s Irish Origins database, with a further 200,000 index records to be added in the next 3 months. We expect this database to contain over a million index records by early 2011.”
