Using virtual volumes
How to use Virtual Volumes
What records are available now?
What are we planning to add?
What should I do if records are not available?
Copyright and ownership of records on Virtual Volumes
Virtual Volumes is the online service designed to allow the National Records of Scotland (NRS) to make thousands of its historical records available to the public. These records are made available without intensive indexing of their contents by personal name, place or other subjects. This page gives you guidance on how to use Virtual Volumes and what records are available. It also provides information on copyright relating to records in Virtual Volumes.
Virtual Volumes allows you to view records in the form of volumes of digital images. You can search for records relating to a place, records created by a specific record creator (such as a court of law or public body), records created between certain dates, or a specific record by its NRS catalogue reference.
Searching by place
Use the place search to look for records relating to a civil parish, county, city, burgh, island or a legal jurisdiction. The results are derived from a gazetteer of civil parishes, counties, burghs, cities, islands and other places in Scotland. Variant names for places are included but link to the main place entry in each case. Examples of valid searches are 'Aberdeen', 'Kilmarnock' and 'Lanark County'.
Screenshot of Virtual Volumes place search
You can filter your results by different types of places on the results page. You can also browse a list of places that are included in the place search gazetteer.
Screenshot of Virtual Volumes place results page
Searching by record creator
Use the record creator search to look for records created by a specific court or body (such as a kirk session, presbytery, or some other civil, criminal or ecclesiastical court). Examples of valid searches are: 'Ayr kirk session', 'Peebles presbytery' and 'Argyll synod'. You can also browse an alphabetical list of record creators that are included in Virtual Volumes.
Screenshot of Virtual Volumes record creator search
If you are unsure which record creators relate to a specific place, it is better to use the place search. For example, if you want to know which kirk sessions produced records for a parish, but do not know the name of the specific kirk session, it is better to search for the name of the parish using the place search.
Searching for a volume or by date range
If you know the reference number of the volume (for example, from the NRS online catalogue), you can use the volume search to look for that specific reference.
Screenshot of Virtual Volumes volume search
You can also use the volume search to look for any available records in Virtual Volumes within a date range.
The Virtual Volumes image viewer is different from the image viewer for indexed records on the ScotlandsPeople site, in that you can view images free of charge within the image viewer and then, if you decide you want a copy for personal research, you can purchase and download this (as long as you have first purchased credits in the normal way).
The contents list on the right-hand side of the image viewer is a rough list of contents in the volume, similar to chapter marks. If the volume is arranged chronologically, like the minute book of a court, the contents list shows the first image for that year. If the volume contains a mixture of things, such as minutes, accounts and lists of people, the contents list will at least mark the start of each section in the volume and might also go further by giving starts of years or some other detail on sub-divisions. This allows you to jump into a volume at a relevant point.
Screenshot of Virtual Volumes contents list
The contents list appears when you first open a volume but you can close it at any point and bring it back into view by using the contents button on the navigation bar.
Image viewer functions
Screenshot of image viewer navigation bar
Within the image viewer there are a number of functions to help you navigate your way through the volume and to manipulate the image within the viewer.
Previous/Next: The arrows enable you to move forwards and backwards through the volume.
Zoom in/Zoom out: The 'Zoom in' icon magnifies the image which is a useful tool for reading older records. The 'Zoom out' icon will return an image back to its original size.
Fit height/Fit width: This icon will fit the image to the height or width of the parameters of the online viewer.
Rotate: There are two icons for rotate: 'rotate right' and 'rotate left'. To see which is which, use your mouse or keyboard to hover over the options. Please note that you can rotate the image 360 degrees by simply clicking either of the rotate options four times which will then turn the image full circle.
Invert: Select this icon to make the image appear as a negative. To return to the original image, click the 'invert' icon a second time.
Contrast: When you select this icon a bar will appear above the image: 'Adjust image contrast'. This allows you to adjust the contrast of the image by sliding the bar from left to right.
Brightness: When you select this icon a bar will appear above the image: 'Adjust image brightness'. This allows you to brighten or darken the image by sliding the bar from left to right.
Contents: This icon enables you to open or close the contents list of the volume.
Purchasing and downloading an image
When you decide to save a copy of an image for personal research, you can use the purchase button to buy a copy of the image. See our charges page for the current fees for saving images. Once you have bought a batch of credits, you can use credits to purchase an image (which will be saved to the 'Saved volumes' area of your account) and download a high quality jpeg of the image to your own device.
Screenshot of 'Saved volumes' area of user account
Once you have purchased an image, the 'purchase' button on the navigation bar changes to a 'download' button.
Adding to timeline
You can add Virtual Volumes image to timelines. For more information see our guide to timelines.
Virtual Volumes currently contains more than 6,000 volumes from the courts of the Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian churches. The records are mainly those of kirk sessions, presbyteries and synods between 1560 and 1870. To see what is available for a parish, presbytery or synod, use the volume search page or the place search. NRS is grateful to the Church of Scotland for their participation and support in this endeavour.
Virtual Volumes also contains the Scottish Cabinet records for 2005-2006. The Scottish Cabinet is the group of senior Ministers, including the First Minister of Scotland, which is responsible for Scottish Government policy. Further information about these papers can be found in our guide to Scottish Cabinet records.
We will be regularly adding more court records and other records from NRS collections, including annual releases of Scottish Cabinet papers. You can sign up to our newsletters to hear about any significant additions.
Records are being added gradually to Virtual Volumes. If the records appear in the NRS online catalogue and are described as being imaged and available on the search room Virtual Volumes systems but are not visible here, you can contact us to find out if they can be added to Virtual Volumes.
Please bear in mind that it might not be possible to make records available, for example if the records are in private copyright or if the physical nature of the records prevents them being digitally imaged.
NRS uses the Virtual Volumes area of the ScotlandsPeople site to provide researchers with access to thousands of historical records. Researchers can save and download digital copies to their own devices at the NRS's normal charges for obtaining copies for personal private research.
Some of these records are in the care of the NRS but are privately owned. Others are owned by NRS or by Scottish courts and government bodies. They contain some records which are in or out of Crown copyright, and some that are in or out of private copyright.
NRS has made reasonable endeavours to find rights-holders for records that have been digitally imaged and made available online. Before making digital copies of records available online, NRS endeavours to reach an agreement with the owner of the original records and to check the copyright status of the records concerned. Where practicable, we will contact rights-holders to seek permission to make copyright material available. We also carry out risk assessments to identify sensitive and/or personal data, in accordance with the NRS policies on privacy and Data Protection.
We are not always able to identify and trace rights-holders for the content of records. In some cases we may make them available online where the rights-holder cannot reasonably be identified and where, following NRS policies and procedures regarding copyright, we believe the records can be made available under exemptions to copyright restrictions.
If we are contacted by a potential rights-holder who objects to records being made available online, we will remove the images in question from Virtual Volumes until we have been able to assess the case.
Where material is removed for valid reasons of copyright, its removal will be considered as lasting until copyright in the material expires, or until the rights-holder agrees that the material can be reinstated. If you have an enquiry regarding the removal of records from the site or their re-use, please contact us.