Read all the latest news from SoG’s Research Collections Coordinator, Christine Worthington.
From the Collections Team - June 2026
Our current Featured Collection focuses on West Indies research and will be on display in the reading area next to the library until the end of August.
The June issue of Genealogists’ Magazine contains an article by Harry Purvis called Fortunes at Sea: Using Naval Records to Flesh Out Real Lives. It is based upon a Prize list after HMS Juno‘s capture of a French Ship in 1804.
During her one-week work experience placement in May, Ainaya B. from Clapton Girls’ Academy inspected the William Leaf Collection, improved its inventory report, and wrote a small piece for our Learning Hub. William Leaf (1938 – 2000) was a heraldic artist and teacher. He lived for much of his life in Derbyshire and Oxford, and his family history research was donated by his wife over 25 years ago. The improved report will now be used to create a digital catalogue record for this collection.
Library:
We now have over 37,600 catalogue records referring to items on the open library shelves. All our library tracts are now onsite, and we are processing them for permanent addition to the library shelves. We are integrating many maps into the library tract boxes, and most are appearing in the library catalogue for the first time. These appear in the Recent Additions list in the June Genealogists’ Magazine.
We have also been processing a large donation of military history books in recent months, including many army lists, regimental histories, and general works on medals and the effects of war on various places.
Volunteer Peter has been working to ensure that the subject headings for all our Victoria County Histories are consistent and comprehensive. These histories cover many small places and parishes that may not be summarised well in other publications. To these records, he has added nearly 2600 place-name subject headings.
Archive:
A big thank you and congratulations to Bill R. and Susan D., who have recently hit large milestones in the Great Card Index project. Susan has indexed 300 batches of card images and Bill has indexed 400 batches. Thanks to everyone on this project for all your contributions, large and small – we are well into indexing the P surname cards now. Uploading to SoG Explore has now caught up to the proofreading, so if you have ancestors with surnames A-M, it may be worth having a look at these indexed cards.
The indexing of the Great Card Index Volumes is also going strong, with 13 volumes nearly completed. Three volumes are almost fully proofread and ready for upload. Thanks to everyone working very hard on this.
Card indexes digitised during lockdown are being prepared for upload to SoG Explore, and some have been added recently. Most of the card collections we have were received as special collections finding aids, such as those for the Earrey, Mowbray, Pitman, Prude, Stage, Seeer, and Siddall collections, which are now available online.
Other card indexes were created for different purposes during people’s research and sometimes refer to a range of resources, such as the Canada Birth Briefs and Miscellaneous index & foreign monumental inscriptions card indexes – these can also be found online now. Log into SoG Explore and search the A to Z list.
Digital:
In SoG Explore we now have 3304 datasets in the A-Z list, 1.67 million images, over 6,300 documents and 18.8 million index entries.
Digitised typescripts of monumental inscriptions for Durham and Essex have now been added to SoG Explore. Since the project began, 1,720 sets of MIs have been added, with 600 available for members to view at home NOW.
Image sets subject to copyright have [Library Access Only] after their titles, so you’ll know they can be viewed on a library computer by request.
If you don’t live close enough to visit, you can contact our Genealogists at genenquiries@sog.org.uk; they can interrogate items on your behalf and make copies of relevant pages for you.
Additionally, nearly 30,000 pages of library typescripts, card indexes and digital acquisitions added to SoG Explore since September last year on a range of topics.
A list of recent additions to SoG Explore can be found in the Genealogists’ Magazine.
Christine Worthington
Research Collections Coordinator
collections@sog.org.uk
Your feedback is important to us!
We always love to hear from our members and visitors. Your questions and suggestions can help us to improve our collections, services and finding aids.
You can email collections@sog.org.uk, or fill in your post-visit survey form. Questions about how to find and access collection items that may interest you are always welcome.
