General Register House, Edinburgh
(Reproduced by kind permission of Alison Lindsay, NAS)

General Register House interior

Opening of the ScotlandsPeople Centre

Edinburgh’s new family history centre, the ScotlandsPeople Centre, will open all four search rooms on Monday 12 January 2009 from 09:00 to 16:30.

Visitors can pre-book £10 day search places in the search rooms by ringing 0131 314 4300. It is also possible to pre-pay, which will allow you to go straight to your seat.

Centre Café and Shop

Our café will open on Tuesday 13 January 2009 from 08:30 to 15:00. The café will be operated by Ruthven, who specialise in fresh food. Come and see how good their hand-made scones, soup and other tasty delights are!

Our shop is currently open from 09:30 to 12:30 and then 13:30 to 16:15 and we have bookable free* introductory taster sessions in the stunning Adam Dome between 10:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 16:00. Telephone 0131 314 4300 to book a place or simply turn up and see if any seats are free.

Centre Resources

Visitors can access digitised key Scottish resources such as birth, marriage and death records, wills, census records and coats of arms, going back almost 500 years.

Please note that the free* taster sessions and shop area will be closed from midday on Wednesday 24 December 2008 and will re-open on Monday 5 January 2009 with our current opening hours.

Staff are on hand to offer help and advice and there is a Help and Information manual on each desk.

* We charge for any prints or electronic saves as detailed below:

Famous Scots Exhibition 2009

Starting with Billy Connolly we are exploring the family history of six well-known Scots throughout the Homecoming Scotland 2009 year. We will be looking into their ancestry in a series of six exhibitions, and we will show you how to trace your own Scottish family history in the ScotlandsPeople Centre.

Each of the exhibitions will deal with aspects of carrying out your family search. All the documents we will use are publicly-available, and will reveal aspects of the Famous Scot’s past – their ancestors’ occupations, where they lived, and how their lives were shaped by the changing communities to which they belonged.

An interactive resource provides a step-by-step guide to help you begin your own journey of discovery. That journey can continue in the ScotlandsPeople Centre when you leave the exhibition.

The exhibitions are being staged in the very centre of Scotland’s family history archive – surrounded by tens of thousands of registers in which the lives of Scots from the 16th century to the present are inscribed.

Visit of Her Majesty the Queen

Her Majesty the Queen visited the ScotlandsPeople Centre on Friday July 4 2008 to mark the completion of building work on the site. The Royal party toured the search rooms, viewed some original and digitised records, and met staff and contractors.

A plaque was unveiled to commemorate the event and Her Majesty signed the visitors book. Full details and pictures of the event are available in our Project update.

Registrar General Duncan Macniven said:

“Scotland’s people have always been intrigued by their roots and family history, with thousands of people visiting our search rooms every year.

“The new, improved facilities in the ScotlandsPeople Centre will give customers instant access to a wider range of key records in a magnificent historical setting. We have space now to offer two-hour tasters to people who are new to family history, to let them see how easy it is to trace your ancestors.

“We are all delighted to see this project complete and look forward to welcoming customers from Scotland and further afield.”

Centre User Group

The minutes of the latest meeting of the Centre User Group are available here: Centre User Group minutes, August 14 2008.