Can I see actual records online?
Some information is available: various Nonconformist registers (pre-1837); List of Bilston Cholera victims 1832; Bilston St Leonard parish registers 1686-1812; Wednesfield St Thomas parish registers 1751-1837; Willenhall St Giles parish registers 1642-1812; Wolverhampton St Peter parish registers 1539-1838; Monumental Inscriptions for St Peter's; 1891 census surname index for Wolverhampton, Wills and other probate documents Hearth tax returns for Wolverhampton 1666;

There are many thousands of documents held at Wolverhampton Archives & Local Studies amounting to millions of pages, many of which are handwritten and bulky. The service has 5 staff, all of whom are fully occupied with acquiring, cataloguing and repairing documents, as well as operating the busy public service. It would be impossible for staff to begin large scale digitisation of collections although we are constantly reviewing our site and it is likely that some additional items will be added in the future.

We are always grateful to people who donate copies of their work to our collections and it is through the efforts of local researchers that we are able to have on our site the 1891 census surname index and the transcripts of parish registers. Transcribing and indexing these documents took several years and would have been outside the scope of the existing staff. If you are working on a similar project and would be happy to allow us to add a hard copy to our collection and/or a digital copy to our website, please contact us.

When will the 1901 census be available?
The census is online from 2nd January 2002. It is available on the Internet on a pay-per-view basis at http://www.census.pro.gov.uk . We also have copies on microfilm for the Wolverhampton area - contact us for more information.

Are the GRO indexes available online?
The General Register Office indexes to birth, marriage and death certificates are not available online at the moment. However, there is a co-operative project, FreeBMD, which has been granted permission by the Office for National Statistics to digitise the indexes and make them available over the Internet. This massive project is being undertaken by volunteers from around the world and will take a long time to complete (there are approximately 100 million entries to digitise!). The project is concentrating on the births, marriages and deaths registered 1837-1900, although later information is accepted. Search the available records online and find out about becoming a project volunteer at http://freebmd.rootsweb.com

Is the IGI available online?
Yes - the International Genealogical Index, compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) is online and searchable by name at www.familysearch.org

Why can't I open the PDF files on the site?
This may be because you don't have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. Download it free of charge here and then run the downloaded file to install the program. If you do have the Acrobat Reader installed, then make sure it is the latest version. Our PDF files were created using Adobe Acrobat 4.05 and may not display correctly if you are using an earlier version of the reader.

If you do have the latest version of the Acrobat Reader installed and are still having problems then try right-clicking on the link to the file you want to see and selecting 'Save Target As...' from the menu. This will save the file to your hard drive and you should be able to open it from there. If you are still unable to open the file, please contact us. We are not technical experts but we will do our best to help!

When will I be able to search your catalogues online?
We are currently working on this and hope to have the archives catalogue available online by the summer/autumn 2002. It will not be a complete list as many of our documents are not yet catalogued onto computer and are only accessible by checking our card index. In the meantime, don't hesitate to contact us if you want to check our holdings on a particular subject.

Do you accept online credit card payments?
We are now able to accept payments by credit and debit card for orders placed over the phone, by fax or by post. As yet, we cannot process credit cards online and we strongly advise against sending us credit card details via email as this is not a secure medium.

 last updated 1 January 2002