CD ROMs for local studies
The CD ROM has become a very popular means of making original source material available at a reasonable price.
The ability to store vast quantities of information in a small space has made possible the publication of many resources that would have been impossibly expensive to publish in book form.
Well used favourites for family and military historians include the lists of soldiers who died in the two World Wars and the British 1881 census index and short transcript. This was produced by the Mormon Church; they have also produced CDs such as the National Burial Index and the Vital Records Index for millions of christenings and marriages.
There are growing numbers of parish register copies becoming available and Census returns for other areas of the country are being purchased as they are published.
The republishing of many long out of print old books such as Ormerod's History of Cheshire is another welcome trend. The old Ordnance Survey 25 inch to the mile maps for Derbyshire (about the year 1900) are a particularly welcome new resource on CD ROM.
Unfortunately there are many problems in making CDs readily available on the library computers. In some cases there are copyright problems and many of the ones marketed for individuals to purchase are not compatible with a networked computer system. For this reason, local studies CDs are at present only available in the larger libraries.
To view the list of CD ROMs available in the local studies collection at County Hall, please click on the subject headings on the left hand side of this page.