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Interestingly, despite the fact that we only ever advertised in UK journals around 50% of our new clients came from overseas, most from the U.S.A, Australia and New Zealand. This trend has continued. The business continued to expand through out the 90's during which time the demand for our services often exceeded our capacity to meet all the requests we received and we had to decline some work. We later read the report of a Government sponsored body offering career advice that stated that there were very few full-time professional genealogists employed in the UK, perhaps 20 to 30 only. Whilst we doubt the accuracy of their estimate we were gratified to learn that we were apparently amongst the few professional genealogists enjoying full-time employment in the UK ! We knew we must be doing something right.
We adopted the practice in the 90's of investing a significant proportion of our income in improving our data and computer resources so that we could maintain & improve the service to our clients. This was a practice that stood us in good stead as we entered the 21st Century. Top
Into the 21st Century . . .
The start of the new millennium saw us facing new challenges and new opportunities. The new millennium saw a general increase in public interest in family history. In the UK this has been reflected by the success of popular TV programs such as ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ and an an increase in the number of family history orientated magazines. The renewed interest in genealogy was above all fueled by the internet and in particular by the expansion of companies such as Ancestry.com that provide access to billions of genealogically-related data.
We opened our own web-site in response to this increased popularity of genealogy and expanded our resources and support staff to meet the increased work this generated.
There were those that predicted the demise of companies such as ours once so much genealogical data became available on the internet. The opposite has proved to be the case. We put our own continuing success down to the following; Top
1) We offer a professional research service using professionals trained in research to doctorate level with decades of relevant experience and a proven track record. Experience shows that it often needs more than access to all the data available on the internet to properly unravel your family tree. It needs someone with the appropriate research training, talent and experience to produce reliable results. It needs the professionals.
2) We have local access to the records of the major repositories in our specialist areas. Many, probably most, of these records are not available on the internet, and probably never will be. With our years of experience and our own unique indexes we can research these at a competitive price, generally cheaper than the record offices themselves charge, and without any charge for travelling expenses and time. Top
3)We offer a personal, friendly and confidential service. We recognise that researching someone's family history is generally a joint exercise. We try where appropriate to work in partnership with our clients to ensure that we make the best use of all the information they already have so that time is not wasted discovering what is already known. Often the tiniest snippet of information considered irrelevant by a client can save hours of needless research and prove to be more significant than at first realised.
We recognise too that most people researching their family history consider it their hobby. They don't want someone else working out their entire family tree for them, they just need a little assistance to get them over the next hurdle so that they can continue their pastime. We are experts at doing just that.
The Future
We are always trying to improve our service. If there is a service that we do not offer at present that you’d like to see please let us know. We have recently started our GETTING YOU STARTED service in response to such suggestions. We hope that you will find this or one of other services of use. Top
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