WHAT ARE SACRAMENTAL RECORDS?

Sacramental records allows you to consult the historical census, 1490-1900, of the inhabitants of the three territories of the Autonomous Community that is collected in the sacramental books of the Catholic Church. Contains 5.6 million records relating to baptized, married and deceased.

The historical census 1500-1900 of the inhabitants of the three territories of the Autonomous Community is collected in the sacramental books of the Catholic Church. All the inscriptions of baptized, married and deceased up to the year 1900 (5,600,000 records) have been indexed.

Digitization and indexing project of the sacramental records of the three diocesan archives of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (1999 - 2008)

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Department of Culture began a cooperation program with the Dioceses of Bilbao, San Sebasti�n and Vitoria, whose Diocesan Historical Archives preserve the most voluminous and relevant Privately-owned Documentary Heritage of the Autonomous Community. Two objectives were pursued:

Promote a project that interests and benefits the public. In this sense, Documentary Heritage plays an important democratizing role, to the extent that all citizens actively participate in the process of creation and sedimentation of the Archives and increasingly demand the same role in the enjoyment of their use, for educational, cultural or recreational.
Allocate additional resources to intensify the most urgent government strategies and objectives or those with the greatest social impact -which were later included in the Basque Plan for Culture-.

In the year 2000, the Department of Culture signed an agreement with the three Basque Dioceses whose objective was the indexing, digitalization and dissemination via Internet of the sacramental collections of the parishes of the Basque Country concentrated in the respective three Diocesan Archives. This Agreement continued in the years 2002 and 2003, and culminated in the signing of a four-year Agreement (2005-2008).

First phase: Financial year 2000/1. Definition of the project

Investment: E690,000

Goals:

Definition of the general project and coordination between the three archives to agree on common criteria, without forgetting the different starting situations.
Integration of the project in the general planning of each file
Acquisition of technical resources
Creation of work teams in each file and distribution of tasks
Establishment of methodology and criteria for digitization and indexing

Second phase: 2002-2004 budget years. Implementation of the project.

Investment: 420,708 (2002), 420,000 (2003) and 360,000 (2004) [E1,200,000]

Goals:

Digitizing and checking images
Indexing of parish records
Creation of web pages and specific management systems for each archive (Inet Archive Management System in Bilbao and Vitoria, -hereinafter SIGA- and Electronic Management System in Donostia, hereinafter SEG)
Redefinition of all the policies of each archive: descriptive planning, dissemination of images, management of face-to-face and virtual users, conservation of new supports.

Third phase: 2005-2008 budget years. Project execution.

Investment: E3,000,000

Goals: The goals set have been rigorously met and, in this sense, a very complex and risky project has been crowned with success.

Digital services have been created in the Diocesan Historical Archives of Bilbao, San Sebasti�n and Vitoria
The complete indexing of all the sacramental records of baptized, married and deceased of all the historical parishes of the Basque Country (1490-1900) has been completed, which can be consulted on-line on this web page. Records associated with your digitized image on the servers of the proprietary Archives.
The entire descriptive process of records and documents has been standardized, applying the ISAD(G) multilevel description standard, indexing according to agreed criteria and computerization, with the aim of disseminating this information on each website as well.

Still today (2018), the final result is unique in the European (and world) panorama of archives and their documentary dissemination on the web: the complete index of the historical register of residents of the Basque Country from 1490 to 1900. In total , 5,600,000 records of personal descriptive entries, with the index of the annotations of baptisms, marriages and deaths of 400 years of history.

In addition to this, throughout these years of collaboration, the Diocesan Historical Archives have become modern and efficient customer service (in person and through the web). They have modified their physiognomy, incorporating some new features:

There has been a qualitative change of great importance. Thanks to this project, the Diocesan Archives of the Basque Country have positioned themselves at the forefront of state diocesan archives -and probably also European ones- in terms of technological development and dissemination of documentation on the Internet. From this point of view, a small revolution has been launched whose success becomes something very important for the scientific community and for users.
Creation of added value and use of synergies: a project like this, which allows us to combine the classic aspects of archiving work -description + indexing of documentation- with the most advanced technologies, is an eloquent demonstration of the direction in which we are headed -or should be. ir - archive services for users in a rapidly changing world in terms of information services, in the fields of education, culture and knowledge
Archival Development Laboratory. The fact that an archival service with a huge collection of documentation and very important information dedicates its main effort to uploading this information on the Internet means developing a laboratory for archival experimentation and research. In this sense, a very valuable niche of practical knowledge has been generated.

On top of all this, this collaboration has produced tangible immediate results. It has been achieved:

Facilitate access to documentation for the broadest group of users of the Euskal Herria Archives: those interested in family history and genealogy. They make up about 90% of all file users.
Have high-quality information of statistical and historical value, which is of interest to a wide spectrum of professionals: demographers, anthropologists, sociologists, etc.
Provide service to the diaspora, a very relevant group in the whole of government action for years. Group eager for this type of information, which is already one of the main clients of the Badator service.
Significantly enrich the Badator service, placing it in a privileged place among file information servers at a European level.

Bilbao, February 2018