The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.48 No.1 | June 2021

Local Group Programmes

Zoom Meetings Some groups are now having their meetings online. To join these email the group leader for details. If you have access to the internet there are sometimes more details of forthcoming meetings available. Please check the HGS Website for latest details, as the UK lockdown is eased some meetings may be at the ‘usual’ meeting place or via Zoom.

Contact: Jane Hurst – 82, The Butts, Alton, Hants GU34 1RD Tel: 01420 86701 Email: janehurst1@gmail.com

Alton Meetings are normally held monthly on the second Monday at 7.30 p.m. in All Saints Church Hall, Queens Road, Alton.

The group are not meeting at present.

Forthcoming Meetings:

No details available

Contact: Ann McKenzie, Tel: 07733 112975, E-mail: andover@hgs-online.org.uk

Andover Meetings are normally held on the second Thursday, September to July, commencing 7.30p.m. at The Fairground Hall, Weyhill, Andover SP11 0QN Reports by Richard Backhouse (February) The National Archives – Simon Fowler

Simon is an experienced genealogist who has worked with the National Archives (TNA) for some time. TNA currently is closed to personal visitors, so Simon took us on a trip around the TNA website. During Lockdown, the website has undergone some changes. The good news is that some of the normally chargeable TNA content is temporarily available to download free of charge. TNA holds about 11 million items but only about 5% have been digitised for viewing online. Although substantial indexing has been applied to help us to find documents, much of the searching requires readers to browse through collections. Simon thinks the home ‘Search’ option is not helpful and provides too many hits. He later suggested a better option and took us through the three main areas highlighting key features. Help with your research includes library catalogues, 150 research guides, tutorials, podcasts and professional contacts. There is a ‘live chat’ facility together with email and phone information. He advised against ordering individual copied pages because TNA provide the whole document instead at great expense.

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