Benefits of Guild membership

What are the benefits of membership?

Membership of the Guild entitles members to the following range of benefits:

The Journal of One-Name Studies, issued quarterly to members, with news, articles and ideas on this branch of family history.
Annual Conference and other Seminars, held in various parts of Britain, with speakers on one-name studies.
Regional Representatives, based in most counties of the UK and in various worldwide locations, some of whom hold local meetings where members can discuss their studies.
Publications of the Guild including the Members' Handbook issued to all new members.
The Register of One-Name Studies, listing the surnames registered by members together with their names and addresses.
The Guild Forum, a worldwide email discussion group where members can share experiences and learn from each other.
Guild email addresses of the form , that stay the same as long as you remain a member, even if you change your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Discounts on specialist books and computer products suitable for one-name studies, available from our bookstall.
Discounts from some Data Providers on their Subscription or Pay-Per-View websites.
Access to the Members' Room - the members' private area of the website where many helpful resources are available, including the Guild Knowledge Store - a Wiki where you can both learn about and contribute to information on one-name study techniques.
The Guild WARP provides information and guidance regarding security issues associated with electronic data and Internet services.
Chairmans newsflash.

In addition, if you register a surname with the Guild, you will benefit from the following:

Participation in Guild Projects such as Marriage Challenges (a co-operative project to obtain details of post-1837 England & Wales Marriages)
The Guild Marriage Index, a facility to help members find the names of marriage partners and identify the locations of post-1837 marriages
The Guild Probate Index, a similar facility to index the various names other than the testator's mentioned in Wills
Guild Archives, a facility for storing members' one-name study data in electronic form on the Guild's website for backup or reference
Guild Profiles, a simple method of generating a web page summarising a member's one-name study, without needing any web technology skills
The Guild lookup service

Members' Handbook

Many organisations produce a handbook as a reference point for their members, giving them an overview of the way in which the organisation functions. In addition, a handbook may provide guidelines regarding the expectations of the members and their responsibilities towards the organisation.

The first Members' Handbook was produced in June 2003; in September 2007 an updated Second Edition was published and distributed to members. Since then, new members joining the Guild have been provided with a copy of this Handbook as part of their welcome pack.

A copy of the current Handbook is available in the Members' Room.

The Guild Forum

This is a lively discussion forum where members can discuss the Guild itself, their one-name studies, and other genealogical matters. It is open only to Guild members. By joining the group, you will have ready access to help and advice from other members. You will also be able to participate in discussions, or simply be a bystander and watch the discussions develop.

The Forum provides a fast, convenient and inexpensive means of keeping in touch, of giving and receiving help, and perhaps of solving your research problems.

Guild email aliases

The Guild offer members free permanent email addresses. Mail addressed to, say smith@one-name.org, is forwarded automatically to the real email address of the member who has registered the surname Smith as a one-name study. If the member changes their service provider, they only need to tell the Guild, not all of their contacts.

If you register a Guild email address, all mail addressed using this address is forwarded to your 'real' email address. This happens automatically - no-one in the Guild can read it - so the address can, if you wish, be used for all your email, not just in connection with your one-name study.

findmypast.com

The Guild has established a close relationship with www.findmypast.com, which involves a degree of co-operation and mutual assistance. As part of this co-operation, findmypast.com provide Guild members with a package of benefits and the Guild provide greater assistance in the marketing and development of findmypast.com’s services.

www.findmypast.com provide all Guild registered members with a 10% bonus on the units they purchase from them or a 10% discount on any of findmypast.com subscription packages. There are two promotional codes, one for pay-per-view units and one for subscriptions, which are available from the Members Room. To receive the bonus or discount, Guild members simply need to quote the appropriate promotional code.

Please note that the promotional codes cannot be used in addition to any other special findmypast.com offers. For example, members will not be able to gain an additional 10% in addition to the 20% loyalty discount available to all renewing members for a findmypast.com subscription.

The Guild WARP

Many Guild members are intensive users of electronic data and Internet services. While the Internet can be a valuable (if sometimes unreliable) source of information, there are also security threats when using the Web and email, such as Viruses, Trojans and various scams designed to trap users.

The Guild has therefore established a WARP – Warning, Advice and Reporting Point – which provides support on such threats to subscribing members. The Guild’s WARP is officially recognised by the UK government as the first WARP in the voluntary sector.

The WARP provides:

A trusted environment where problems can be shared
Filtered early warning of security threats
Access to expert advice
Improved awareness of security issues

all in the context of the Guild and genealogy that other sources would not have.

Chairman's newsflash

Those members who notify the Guild of their email address (and who do not opt out) receive the Chairman's Newsflashes, an occasional email distributed to let members know of urgent issues that can't wait for the quarterly Journal. Contents may include important news of Guild or other genealogy events of interest to members.

Marriage Challenges

A "Marriage Challenge" is a Guild project undertaken by one or more members, where the marriage registers for a given Registration District and a given period between 1837 and 1911 are searched for requested registered surnames. This then provides the information not available from the GRO indexes for these marriages, i.e. the name of the spouse, the fathers' names and occupations, etc. Details of marriages found are returned to the requesters, and also entered into the Guild Marriage Index.

The Guild Marriage Index

Guild members are likely to have extensive lists of marriages, often with no more information than can be obtained from the GRO index, which for the period 1837-1911 consists only of year, quarter, name, district, volume and page. The additional data we would like to have (name of the spouse, addresses, fathers' names and occupations etc) can be obtained on purchase of a certificate: an expensive course of action, prohibitively so in the case of a typical one-name study with maybe hundreds of marriages in this period. The details can also be obtained from church registers - but where to start searching? A GRO registration district can contain a number of parishes and, particularly in London, one parish may encompass several churches, each with its own register.

The Index provides a way for members to exchange information and to contact others with whom their one-name studies have links. The marriages can be searched for the surname that is not the one registered by the submitter. Thus, members can easily retrieve all the marriages of interest to themselves, without at the same time retrieving their own entries.

Members are encouraged to contribute marriages to the Index.

The Guild Probate Index

Wills are indexed under the name of the testator, but frequently contain many other names. The Guild Probate Index aims to build up a database of these "other names" as an additional source of data for members whose one-name study may thus be linked to another member's study.

The Guild Archive

The Guild Electronic Archive (or just the "Guild Archive") allows members of the Guild to present some of the records from their one-name study to Internet users by placing the information on the Guild web site. Members may choose to allow access to these records to everybody or to be restricted to fellow members of the Guild.

To see what records have been placed on-line for public use, click on the initial letter of the surname you are searching for. A list of registered names for which records have been placed on-line will be displayed.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Guild Profiles

Guild Profiles allow members of the Guild to create a web page describing their individual one-name studies without needing any technical knowledge of how to construct web pages. The existence of a web page makes it much easier for fellow researchers on the Internet to find information about a member’s study.

Profile pages are organised into eight distinct topics and may include a picture to illustrate the study. Contact details for the member may also be included on the page.

Members may produce a single profile page for each one-name study registered with the Guild. To see what profile pages have been created, click on the initial letter of the surname you are interested in. A list of registered names for which profiles have been produced will be displayed.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Lookups

The Guild offers a number of lookup services, providing access to CD-ROMs that would not readily be available to members. These are currently:

Biography database
Soldiers died in the two World Wars
Armies of the Crown
The Complete Peerage
Cracroft's Peerage
Westminster Database

In addition, the Guild offers a look-up service to the various databases held by www.findmypast.com. This service is only available to registered Guild members who do not have email/internet access. The look-ups are currently:

Birth/Marriage/Death UK indexes – July 1837 to December 1983
Birth/Marriage/Death UK indexes – 1984 to 2003
Overseas records of BMDs of British citizens that have taken place abroad since the late 18th Century
1841, 1861, 1871 and 1891 UK censuses – transcriptions and census images
Passenger lists leaving UK 1890 to 1960 (1890 to 1909 currently available).
Migration records 1793 to 1860 (includes registered passport applications, 1851 to 1903, and various Indian records.
Directories & Occupations 1858 to 1925 (includes Clergy list 1896, Dental Surgeon's Directory 1925, Kelly's Handbook 1901, Medical Register 1913 and Medical Directory for Ireland 1858).

Registered Guild members with email access can undertake their own search of www.findmypast.com’s records and can take advantage of the 10% bonus provided.