In 2000 Cheshire's Registration Services became the first in the country to post their Birth, Marriage and Death records on the Internet.

Berkshire now joins the growing group of BMD web sites using the UKBMD software which was initially written for Cheshire

BerkshireBMD is a joint project between the county's registration services and the Berkshire Family History Society, to revolutionise public access to records dating back from the start of Queen Victoria's reign. The Berkshire Family History Society is currently working with the Reading and Slough register offices. This site has comprehensive coverage of Reading Births, Marriages and Deaths between 1837 and a little after 1900, but there is considerable information for later periods, including some marriages from 1959.

In the past, most enquiries for copy certificates have involved Registrars manually searching through hand-written indexes which refer to weighty copperplate ledgers. But now the indexes to hundreds of thousands of births, marriages and deaths from 1837 onwards are being made freely available to family historians throughout the world on the BerkshireBMD web-site.

Researchers can make use of the site's user-friendly search techniques to identify the names they are looking for, and obtain reference numbers from which Registrars can supply the birth, marriage and death certificates.

Computerisation work by dedicated volunteers has already been underway for some considerable time, and the Reading registrars already had some computerised indexes. The site is now available to everyone and updated.

If you have any comments about these pages, or if you would like to know more about how to set up similar projects in your own area, please contact us at Webmaster@UKBMD.org.uk.