All the books on this site can be viewed on-line. If you are viewing from a participating public library this will be free of charge, but otherwise there will a charge of 5p -15p per page. Payment is made either by :-
  • Vouchers for which the minimum charge is £5 , with no maximum, and the average price per page is 10p - 15p. Vouchers are valid for 91 days
  • Library Subscription, limited to 100 page views per month - for 3 months (7.5p per page) or 12 months (5p per page)
  • Library Subscription, unlimited page views per month.  Please note that this option only licences one user to access the system at a time.  Please contact us for multi-user licences
When you purchase a Voucher you will be credited a number of page views, and this will be confirmed when you log on again after successfully completing a voucher or subscription purchase. Please note that page views will not be credited until payment has been confirmed, and that for library subscription this will mean payment in full for the full subscription period. Please also note that although there is no charge for viewing Electoral Roll results, you will need to have a valid voucher or subscription in order to view the results.
Books are viewed a page at a time. This is likely to be rather slow unless you have broadband.
There are various ways in which you can find a page of interest (as at the middle of 2006 there were 300,000+).
  • Browse through the books (Libary, then select a category of interest, click on the link and "browse the shelves" to find a book of interest , view the description of the book, and from that page either conduct a Search on just that book, (see below) or view its contents and index pages (which are free to view).
  • ... or you could use a "Search". These were generated using optical character recognition software, so are not 100% accurate, but are nevertheless a useful finding aid. After you have found generated text that looks to be of interest, you can then check by looking at an image of the original page. Searches available are :-
To find a book of interest
  • Find a book - use the Find a book tab, then enter search words to conduct a search of the title of each book, its description in the catalogue, or its contents or index pages.
To find a page of interest
  • Book search - to search an individual book, find a book by browsing through the catalogue (see above), enter a search keyword in the "Search this book" text box, and press Go!   
  • Search Library - use Library then Search Library tab, then enter search words to conduct a search of all the text in all the books on this site..... or just fill in the box at top left and hit "Search" 
To find a person in the Electoral Roll
  • Search Electoral Roll - use Library then Search Electoral Roll tab, then enter search words to conduct a search of all the text in all the books on this site.  Note that if you are looking for two people who lived at the same address that this search will help you to locate them.
Once you have found a page that is of interest, and you have displayed it on your screen, you can page backwards and forwards through the book you have selected by using the menu on the top menu bar (see below). To avoid confusion, the page navigation bar only appears when there are pages to navigate - and if there are copyright permissions to be displayed these are displayed at the same time.
Page Navigation Bar
If, having viewed an image, you wish to report a problem with it, then please click on the "Report Problem image" link, and follow instructions.
If you want to have the book title superimposed on the image of the page, then please click on the "Add page title" link. This may be useful if you are printing out several pages of interest, and want to be certain you know from which book they came. To print the displayed page image, please click on the printer icon on the Page Navigation Bar.
Viewing your page
Please note that if you are not logged on as a registered user when you try to view a page, you will be redirected to the log on page. In addition, if you try to view a page when you have no remaining "Page View Credits" you will be advised on this, and invited to purchase some more page credits or a subscription.
(i) via Search
After you have entered you search keywords, you will be presented with a list of books where your keywords can be found. By following the instructions thorugh two or three screens, you will eventually be presented with an extract of text. You will then be given the opportunity to either buy the book on CD, or view on-line the page on which this extract was found. By selecting this latter option, you a copy of the page in Adobe Acrobat PDF format will be downloaded to you This page will be searchable, so if you want to find your search keywords quickly, you can use the Adobe "Find" facility (accessed by clicking on the binocular symbol on the Adobe toolbar).
(ii) via Index or Contents (free)
You can access the Index or Contents of a book by browsing through our catalogue of books and, obnce you have found a book of interest, pressing the button entitled "View Index/Contents". You will be presented with a list of pages where an index or contents is to be found for the book you have selected . Books are often published in several volumes, so you may be presented with more than one set of indexes or contents pages.
Select the index or contents page that looks to be most likely to be of interest. The image of this page will be downloaded to you. You can then choose which page you want to view, enter it into the "Page Navigation bar" on the top menu, press "GO!" and that page will be downloaded to you in .pdf format (which can be read on most browsers).
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