User:DenCol/FreeREG

= FreeREG (Free UK Genealogy) = FreeREG is a Free UK Genealogy project, which crowdsources volunteer transcriptions of parish and nonconformist registers of baptisms, marriages and burials.

Access to the online searchable database is given freely, as well as information on the records that have been transcribed for each county.

History
Development of FreeREG started soon after the launch of FreeBMD in 1998. It was publicly announced by Rod Neep in January 2000 but without any search ability. Rod was very much the driving force for its creation but development in Javascript was under the guidance of Ben Laurie as the project manager with support from Graham Hart, David Mayall, Camilla Gemmingen von Massenbach, Brian Randell and Phil Stringer. A test version of a search capability first appeared in July 2001 due to the efforts of Graeme Faichney and David Newbury (who had replaced Rod Neep as Chairman of the FreeREG Executive Committee). The test version proved to be unacceptable as a basis for future development and a decision was taken to redevelop the project using the same computer language (Perl) as was being successfully used by FreeBMD.

In 2004 Kirk Dawson joined David Newbury  on the Executive to work on the User Interface of the website and Anne Fish took on responsibility for Scottish records.

FreeREG finally went live on 29 September 2006 with a search engine and with the database of 1,066,000 records with updated monthly thereafter. David Mayall then assumed responsibility for the programming and further development. After the launch several county coordinators were appointed and as a result of their work with transcribers around the world the database continued to grow. Eric Dickens assumed chairmanship of the Executive Committee and was joined by John Pingram, Mark James and Kirk Dawson.

In early 2012 the Trustees decided to investigate the feasibility of moving to on-line transcription and to redevelop FreeREG to support such a capability. A development team of Ben Brumfield and Kirk Dawson was established to carry this work forward. The new version of FreeREG was released to the public on 8 April 2015 supporting real time updating and data entry/editing, On line transcription remains to be implemented, Due to the hard work of over two thousand transcribers and their dedicated coordinators there were over 38 Million records available for research free of charge in June 2017.

Membership
The organisation's facilities are available to all without the need to become a member. Volunteers who transcribe data for the project sign up for membership online, in order to allow access to the relevant facilities.

Awards and Reputation
The accuracy of FreeREG's transcriptions has been recognised by the Bristol & Avon Family History Society.