Millions of British Library records to go online

Millions of records, including UK electoral registers and records of births, marriages and deaths in India will be made available to explore online thanks to a new partnership between the British Library and findmypast.co.uk.

The documents will be scanned and digitised as part of a new project, expected to be completed early in 2012. As well as UK electoral registers spanning a century from 1832, a wide range of records drawn from the archives of the East India Company and the India Office will offer new clues into British people living and working in the Indian subcontinent from the 18th century onwards.

The digitisation of the electoral registers will prove particularly valuable for family historians as the printed versions are not indexed by name. The project will produce a searchable database of names and addresses, potentially saving hours of manual detective work.

"We are delighted to announce this exciting new partnership between the British Library and findmypast.co.uk, which will deliver an online and fully searchable resource that will prove immensely valuable to family history researchers in unlocking a treasure trove of content that up to now has only been available either on microfilm or within the pages of bound volumes," says the British Library's head of licensing and product development, Simon Bell. "The library will receive copies of the digitised images created for this project, so as well as transforming access for current researchers, we will also retain digital versions of these collections in perpetuity, for the benefit of future researchers.”