ScotlandsPlaces

Bringing together historical data about the people and places of the nation, the ScotlandsPlaces website is a collaboration between RCAHMS, the National Archives of Scotland, the Scottish Government and the University of Edinburgh.

The new website allows anyone from novices to expert genealogists to search all of Scotland online for invaluable documents, records and photographs from the past and present.  Using GIS technology to link archive material to specific locations, users can navigate detailed interactive maps and plot and view search results on geobrowsers like Google Earth. The resources currently available on the site range from listings of land ownership, details of boundary changes and Register House records, to Medical Officer of Health Reports, Farm Horse Tax Rolls, and photographs, plans and drawings of Scotland’s buildings and archaeology. By collating previously separate material geographically and presenting new collections online for the first time, the project makes research simpler for the public and reveals information to even wider audiences.

The launch of the ScotlandsPlaces beta site on 22 October 2009 marked the end of the first stage of the project and is a showcase for the long-term potential of bringing together place-related archive material from different organisations.   The next stages of the project will see the addition of further information from current partners, and new partners joining the site to add their own resources.