There are three main types of Meetings or Activities:
Workshops
These are interactive evenings when you can get help or share experience or expertise with other members. At some, you can get advice about climbing those infernal brick walls that are impeding your progress. At others, you might be invited to bring along some of your the family history materials that you have already unearthed and where you would welcome further advice. Perhaps you might reveal a family heirloom or artifact whose story other members would be interested in. Sometimes, you’ll get the chance to explore the use of things like Censuses or Old Parish Records or how to find records of headstone inscriptions – even how to read the originals which can sometimes be quite a challenge.
Talks
These are often about techniques that you might employ in your own research such as searching censuses or using historical maps. Others provide background information like transport history to help understand how your ancestors ended up where they did. Some might be more general topics like Place Names or Family Names to supply more depth to your findings.
Many of the talks will be given by Members covering their particular experience of topics of interest. There will be occasional outside speakers who are all very knowledgeable in their particular fields or areas and the talks are usually illustrated with images and other materials. If there are handouts on the evening, these will normally be available later in the Latest News tab of this site.
Visits
There are normally two or three of these organised each year. One is usually to the Mitchell Library, either to spend a day in the Archives section of the library or in the ScotlandsPeople section where you have access to all of the digital records of the National Records of Scotland for £15.
Other visits are often to the Local Archives of specific areas of Scotland like Fife or Ayrshire, whilst some are visits to relevant museums with special access organised or specialised libraries or even graveyards.
So there’s always something relevant to what you’re doing. The details of this session’s programme will be found by clicking on the “Programme” tab above.