The Issue

Scottish parochial and statutory records are kept at New Register House in Edinburgh and are accessible through an efficient online system at "Scotland's People", www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk. Under this system you pay for points, then pay to view records in your search with those points. Sometimes, however, the records you want to view may not have images available.

There are a number of different reasons for this:

• One is that they are outwith the dates for which records can be viewed publicly. Birth records older than 100 years, marriage records older than 75 years and deaths older than 50 years are generally available to view online if they have been scanned. Records after those dates, however, can only be viewed in person at New Register House, (or ordered at a minimum cost of £11 each).
• Another reason there may not be an image available is that the record is an Old Parish Record (OPR), many of which have not been filmed or digitised. If these appear in a Scotland's People search, they have been filmed, and are archived, but can only be viewed at the New Register House site.
• Finally, some records which otherwise meet all the requirements for being available to view still have no image associated with them at the online site, but are easily viewable at the facility at New Register House. This is a bit of a mystery, but it does happen. One suggestion for the occurrence of this phenomenon is that there is "sensitive" material somewhere on the document, but this has not been proven.

Regardless of the reason, getting "hits" for a search only to be met with pages of "No Image" can be frustrating. In order to view the document you must order it, which can be expensive. If the record you order turns out not to be related to your search, there is no way to recover the cost.