Local Archives Online - Update
20 January 2011
We have written before about the municipal and communal archives. They are going online at such a snapping pace that including them in a list of links would, we believe, require its own website and a full time employee dedicated to that subject alone. We considered it but, as Typepad is having trouble learning the alphabet, we decided against it.
By far, the best way to find if a particular city or village has their archives online is to simply google the town's name and archives communales or archives municipales. Additionally, the website of Archives de France maintains a list, though they are far behind. Généinfos, the blog of the magazine La Revue française de Généalogie, maintains a map that is quite up to date.
Now, however, quality varies enormously.
- There are the truly gorgeous sites, as for Lyon, Avignon and, of all places, Brive-la-Gaillarde. These are the one the Archives de France will list, not touching those below.
- There is an outfit called Archives Multimedia that is toodling around the country filming communal archives and setting up a website for each that is minimalist in the extreme, but still works.
- There is the effort by one Christian Perrier to get everyone who has home snapshots of parish and civil registers to upload them.
Given the fact that quite a few Departmental Archives (links to all are in the panel to the left on this page) still do not have parish and civil registrations online, it is worth while to keep checking to see if the commune you seek may not have put their own records up independently.
Never give up!
©2011 Anne Morddel
French Genealogy