brightsolid voted best Genealogy Organisation - 2011
brightsolid, the online publishing and technology group, has been voted Best Genealogy Organisation of 2011 in the online GeneAwards (http://www.tamurajones.net/GeneAwards2011.xhtml), reinforcing its position as a leading UK family history and genealogy company.
Over the past year, brightsolid’s online publishing portfolio – including findmypast.co.uk, genesreunited.co.uk and ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk - has introduced new and improved collections. This includes 87 million death records on findmypast.co.uk and completing a two-year project to make the birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales much easier to use. It also teamed up with the Society of Genealogists allowing more than 9 million records to become available to society members and findmypast.co.uk subscribers. In addition the much anticipated 1911 Scotland Census was launched on ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, findmypast.ie was launched, offering over 5 million Irish family history records available and findmypast.au launched with over 55 million records covering Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Findmypast.co.uk also partnered with UKTV to produce its biggest ever advertiser funded programme, including interactive product placement which aired on its Yesterday channel.
Following the announcement of a ten-year partnership with the British Library, brightsolid announced the launch of the British Newspaper Archive, to digitise up to 40 million pages over the next ten years. Launched in November 2011, the website hosts up to 4 million pages from the 18th and 19th century newspaper titles (and adding 8,000 pages a day), with nearly 2 million people visiting the site on its first day. brightsolid has also recently announced a partnership with leading genealogy organisations, Archives.com and Family Search International, to publish a complete set of images and a high quality name index of the entire US 1940 Census, highly anticipated to be the most significant US record collection released to date.
Run by computer scientist Tamura Jones, the awards – now in their sixth year - are designed to illustrate the technologies, events, companies and products that shaped the year in the genealogy industry – best and worst.
brightsolid CEO, Chris van der Kuyl, commented: “Being voted Best Genealogy Organisation of 2011 is a fantastic accolade and highlights the strength of our genealogy businesses. Connecting people and places online is at the heart of what we do at brightsolid - from our recent British Newspaper Archive launch, to the addition of genesreunited.co.uk strengthening our genealogy businesses with the purchase of the Friends Reunited Group in 2010. So whether you are researching your family tree or your local history, our portfolio of websites offers something for everyone.”
