The S&N story

by Nigel Bayley

S&N at the Olympia 'Who do you think you are? Live' show 2007

In 1992 no-one sold Windows-based software or data CDs. I had written my family history on a BBC computer and needed to transfer it onto a PC with Windows software. I couldn't find a UK supplier of Windows packages so bought programs directly from the US with import duty and handling costs it was a lengthy and expensive procedure. After showing the packages to other family historians it was obvious a UK outlet was needed so S&N Genealogy Supplies was born. The name S&N is simply the initials of my wife and I: Sue and Nigel.

Our first small advert brought in so many orders that we didn't see the dining room table for a week. With parcels and jiffy bags everywhere we soon had to expand.

CD was the latest technology and slowly made its way from music to data storage. I thought CDs would be great for distributing family history data, and purchased one of the first CD writers– it was literally the size of a suitcase!

This was the start of our data CD-ROM publishing, putting hundreds of parish records, directories and poll books in a section of the catalogue called British Data Archive.

Family historians at the time needed a fiche and film viewer to be able to view the census. It was believed to be impossible to publish this sort of information on CD-ROM, but I tested various scanners and compression methods and eventually developed a system to publish the census on CD as Acrobat documents.

To see if others were as excited as me by the opportunity to be able to use the census for research on a home computer I talked to Michael Armstrong, the founder of Family Tree Magazine. He encouraged me to develop the idea and wrote an extensive feature on the project in the magazine.

The article created massive interest and advance orders started to pour in. We mortgaged our home and risked everything to buy the equipment, microfiche and film.

In 1999 we needed to set up a limited company to deal with contracts with CD-pressing plants and the PRO, and so S&N British Data Archive Ltd was born.

Sue and Nigel presenting the FFHS Young Genealogist Award

BDA now has census material available from 1841 to 1901 covering England and Wales.

We were the first to publish the UK census on CD-ROM and have developed techniques to improve the image quality by the use of custom software and specialist equipment.

Although others have followed in our footsteps some have tried to reduce the number of CDs to the detriment of the image quality.

In theory, early county populations should mean smaller sets of CD-ROMs but because the early census records have been written in pencil and the paper is discoloured , they are almost impossible to read if the image is just black and white. We have used greyscale scanning from the more expensive Silver Halide film to ensure better readability. This means that our census sets for London, Lancashire and Yorkshire can contain 40 to 45 CDs but in independent tests they have been found to have 30% more readable pages.

We now employ over forty people and publish over 4,000 genealogy products plus a vast array of online data. The profits are ploughed back into developing new genealogy resources. The current project to fully transcribe the census eats up all of our capital — so no flash Ferrari or millions in the bank.

What we do have is high quality data thanks to UK Indexer volunteers and our Online Census team.

My sons have always been part of the business, even when they were small boys, they loved to help out at the fairs. They are now strapping lads but still attend various events. You will often see David and his girlfriend Becky manning the stall and Paul, now six foot six, selling the binders.

Their main roles are based at Manor Farm helping develop the business.

Paul works in our graphics and CD production department, David is our UK sales manager, and Mark is now one of our senior programmers.

Paul is a keen photographer and photographed the Olympia show in 2007 See Pics of Rolf Harris, Ian Hislop etc.

It was Mark’s idea to put together TreeView an interactive online system that allows anyone to store their tree and photographs online. You can share this with invited family or friends. This facility is free for all to use.

TreeView is now also an integral facility on TheGenealogist and can be used if you have ever had a free trial to the site (no credit card required); just visit www.TheGenealogist.co.uk/freesub

S&N at Olympia 2007

We have invested heavily providing a wide range of online data. BMDs, Census, Parish Records and Military Records. We have created new online features such as mapping, online trees, advanced search systems and sharing data.

Our new all-inclusive subscriptions to TheGenealogist have proved very popular. New data sets are added at no extra cost to subscribers.

The more people that subscribe, the more data we can add — so please help us to spread the word and increase the available online data. We keep the costs low so All Inclusive subscriptions can cost as little as £4.66 a month.

We now have several sites that provide online indexes from £5, and several specialist genealogy sites:

www.TheGenealogist.co.uk — online genealogy transcripts and indexes for BMDs, census, parish records, land records, directories, crew lists and more.

www.RootsUK.com — beginners' pay-as-you-go site with BMDs, census and electoral roll databases

www.BMDregisters.co.uk - Non Conformist records of Baptists, Wesleyan, Methodists, Unitarian and many other groups.

www.RootsMagic.co.uk — our top-selling genealogy software

www.BMDindex.co.uk — for Birth Marriage and Death Indexes

www.GenealogySupplies.com — for thousands of genealogy products

www.BritishDataArchive.com — for the census

www.fhs-online.co.uk - FHS Online brings together data from S&N and various Family History Societies across the UK and makes it available to genealogists researching their family trees. 52 databases are free to search

Working with the Federation of Family History Societies we have now launched a new automated online Genealogy Fair website.

GENfair.co.uk is the largest site of it's type with over 120 supplier and over 20,000 different products