The www.rootsireland.ie is in the process of a revamp. The new look website aims to provide users with a clearer, more user-friendly interface. Each county genealogy centre will provide detailed information on the county, its records and include links to other relevant county sources. The new pages for counties Derry, Kildare and Limerick are the first to be launched.
The index on rootsireland.ie can help to identify relevant records by allowing users to search by parish, within a county, within multiple counties or even the whole island of Ireland to pinpoint the baptisms, marriages and, sometimes deaths and gravestones of their ancestors. Rootsireland.ie can save researchers a considerable amount of time and frustration in searching parish records, where a minimum amount of information is known or that information is incorrect. If you do not locate your ancestor where you expect to find them, it is always worth searching across all the available records for possible matches.
When a relevant record is identified a transcript can be viewed. A new feature of the site is that the transcript now has a link to the digital image of the microfilmed parish register at www.nli.ie
This link can be found at the bottom of the record transcript if there is a match and it will bring a user to the relevant parish register of baptism or marriage. It does not link to the page on which the record was originally entered.
It is important to note that the microfilmed parish registers are not complete; they cover the period up to 1880/81, whereas the records on www.rootsireland.ie go up to at least 1899. Users should check our Online Sources lists to see exactly what is available on www.rootsireland.ie, but if you are searching for the period post-1880 the transcripts available online at www.rootsireland.ie cover the majority of the counties in Ireland.
There are also parish registers on rootsireland.ie that have never been microfilmed. Not every Catholic parish register has been transcribed by our county genealogy centres, but we are continuing to index records and regular updates are made to our website.
It is important to note that the microfilmed parish registers are not complete; they cover the period up to 1880/81, whereas the records on www.rootsireland.ie go up to at least 1899. Users should check our Online Sources lists to see exactly what is available on www.rootsireland.ie, but if you are searching for the period post-1880 the transcripts available online at www.rootsireland.ie cover the majority of the counties in Ireland.
There are also parish registers on rootsireland.ie that have never been microfilmed. Not every Catholic parish register has been transcribed by our county genealogy centres, but we are continuing to index records and regular updates are made to our website.
