The following is an announcement from the National Archive of Memorial Inscriptions (NAOMI). I have not yet had a chance to review this site:
This site, which went online last November, enables you to check whether or not there are any memorial inscriptions from the UK which are relevant to your researches. If there are none, you pay nothing. If you find what you want, then you can download and print not only the inscriptions themselves, but also, if available:
- a brief description of the memorial;
- a photograph of the church or chapel;
- a plan of the burial ground; and
- some historical information about the church as well.
For this, you pay a fee of between £4 and £7, depending on how much information you choose to retrieve from what is available.
The NAOMI website is a high quality one. Firstly, it is as reliable as possible - every entry is checked and formatted before it is uploaded, so that you can be confident of its accuracy. This takes us time, but we believe that it is worth the delay to ensure the quality.
Secondly, it is a rich site. Normally, the minimum information provided for every entry is the full inscription, not just names and dates. In addition, you will normally be able to download a range of other information, as listed above.
Finally, it has another purpose, that of encouraging the recording and so saving of the inscriptions, which form such a valuable source of information for family historians, and yet are so vulnerable to the weather and vandalism. This we achieve by the system of royalties which we pay to the providers of the data out of the income generated by those who make use of it.
At present we are working with the Norfolk Family History Society, but we shall be expanding into other areas when we have done all we can in this county. We already have over 100,000 names from over 300 burial grounds in the county, mostly from parish churchyards, but including all other forms of burial grounds with the exception of crematoria.
The more our site is used, the more rapidly will we be able to check, format and input more MIs and so make it increasingly useful to family historians, especially those whose homes are now a great distance from the UK. Have a look at our site - the address is: www.memorialinscriptions.org.uk.
