What the General Register Office for Scotland intends to do with its paper records once they are digitalised; where these records will be h…

As far as the statutory registers of births, marriages and deaths are concerned, two copies of each register are created, one of which is held by the local registration service which created it, and one which is sent to the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) in New Register House in Edinburgh. The registers held in New Register House will be preserved indefinitely. No decision has yet been taken on what will be done with the duplicate statutory registers held by local registration services when the digitisation of statutory registers has been completed. The registers themselves are the property of the Registrar General, while provision of storage and record accommodation is a matter for local registration services. Provision for the duplicate registers from a particular area will therefore be a matter for discussion between the Registrar General and the local registration service. GROS will be happy to be flexible in their approach to this, as they have been on previous occasions when registers have been replaced by microfiche.The other main sets of records that are being digitised by GROS are the open census records and the Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland, both of which are held at New Register House. These, again, will be preserved indefinitely.The Digitally Imaging the Genealogical Records of the Scottish people (DIGROS) project, under which the GROS is creating digital images of all its records, is expected to be completed by late 2003.