Our Collections Online

As well as being able to come to any of our five offices to look at our collections in person we also have a selection of our records available to view online in various forms. Information about our collections can also be found on a number of websites. Below are some links to useful resources that relate to our collections.

WYAS Digital Portal - We have now launched our Digital Portal that allows access to some of our digital and digitised content such as Oral Histories, Tithe Maps and images of the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Ancestry.com - We have worked with Ancestry.com to get a number of our collections available online including baptisms, marriage and burial records as well as other records such as police records and land tax records. See also our guide to Ancestry

History Pin - We have a number of images from our collections available to view on History Pin 

Archive Treasures - We launched a public campaign to see which collections people considered 'Treasures'

Leodis - photographic archive of Leeds delivered by Leeds Library and Information Services, containing many images held by us.

NowThen - This was a community website which allowed exploration of West Yorkshire through experiences of the people who live there.  Whilst the project has come to an end an archived version of the site can be viewed here https://web.archive.org/web/20180809103023/http://nowthen.org/ we also still run the Community Archive Accreditation programme. For more information about this scheme, and for any of the accreditation downloads please contact us at educationandoutreach@wyjs.org.uk and we will send them out to you by email.

workhouses website - Workhouse records are a great family history resource. Sadly not as many records survive as we would like, but any held by WYAS are listed along with historical information about all Workhouses on this useful.

The National Archives Discovery website - This a very good starting point to find out where records are held around the country. Records held by WYAS are included.

Catablogue - To find out the stories behind some of our collections WYAS has a blog which we add to regularly highlighting interesting or new collections.

Parish Map - this Google map shows the location of most of the parishes within West Yorkshire. Not all are there and some are not in the exact location the church was, but it gives an idea of where parish churches are located

Fountains Abbey Blog - Our Leeds office has also worked with the staff at Fountains Abbey to create a about the records held that date back to 1138.

West Yorkshire Historic Landscape Characterisation Project - our colleagues at the Archaeology Advisory Service have been involved in creating a fantastic online resource showing how landscapes change over time. Contact them for further information wyher@wyjs.org.uk 

You can also follow us for information on our collections on Twitter , Facebook and Flickr and our online catalogue is updated regularly with new collections to the service