The Parish and Vital Records Listing (PVRL) is a listing of records that were extracted by volunteers for the Genealogical Society of Utah between 1968 and 1990. It is available on a series of microfiche available at the Family History Library (FHL) and its Family History Centers (FHC) around the world. At the FHL, there is also a printed copy.

The PVRL was updated monthly before it was discontinued in the 1990s. It provides information on each type of record extracted, the time period covered by each event type (christening or marriage), the FHL call number(s) of the extracted source, and the availability and call number (if any) of the printout.

The PVRL is arranged by locality for the whole world. In England, each county has an alphabetical list of parishes that have had records extracted. Each line entry represents an extraction project and the project number is given. The project number is shown in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) as the "batch number." Records extracted for England are from the Church of England unless otherwise noted.

The PVRL should be used to

1. identify which records for a particular locality have been extracted (if any),
2. find whether a parish for the time period desired has been included in the IGI
3. to obtain the call number of the source and/or printout, and
4. check the time period and event(s) that were included in an extraction (a key event may have occured just outside the extracted time period).

The PVRL can also be used to find the source call number for an IGI entry where the IGI batch number begins with a C, M, P, J, or K. In cases where there are multiple films, the extraction projects may be broken down by time periods, with separate film numbers for each time period (although the Family History Library Catalog--FHLC would be a better place to look for this purpose). Projects numbered below 3000 are particularly misleading in reported time period. An aid detailing the years included in each of those projects has been prepared (see FHL REF 942 V2ge Suppl 1971).

The PVRL is not a catalog of the FHL's holdings. While parish records and bishop's transcripts are often extracted shortly after being acquired, many have not been extracted yet. One must check the FHLC (catalog) to see if the church records have been microfilmed.

The Genealogical Society of Utah generally did not extract the same time period from more than one source. Thus, if both the parish registers and the bishop's transcripts were microfilmed, only one would be extracted (usually the parish register unless it was filmed after the BT's were extracted). There may be entries in the unextracted record that do not appear in the extracted record. UNEXTRACTED SOURCES ARE NOT SHOWN in the PVRL!!

The printout reference in the PVRL is to a computer-generated listing of the names taken from the record extracted. They are arranged alphabetically by surname or its variant spellings (then chronologically within that surname). The usefulness of the printout is that it groups the entries for just that parish (or whatever the source is) rather than for every source extracted in the county, as you see in the IGI. This makes it easier to identify siblings to a partcular individual or to find possible parents or other relatives within the same parish. The printout is particularly useful where the surname is common in the area or where a great number of records have been extracted in the same county.

Unfortunately, many extraction projects did not have a printout prepared. For those without printouts, the word none appears in the column for the printout number. The printout call number on the PVRL is marked with a # when microfiche are the format for the printout. Where the extraction has been included in the IGI, you can now use FamilySearch on the Internet to generate a parish printout. Go to the IGI search, enter the project (or batch) number and click on the search button with NOTHING ELSE filled in EXCEPT the IGI region (British Isles). This will give you a list of all the names and events extracted from that batch or project.

The PVRL has a column with ** marked to denote those items that were not in the 1988 edition of the IGI. It may or may not be included in a later edition of the IGI. If the parish that shows up in the PVRL does not appear to be in the IGI (this would be indicated by the double asterisk--** and the inability to locate any entries in the IGI from that parish), you may still be able to find the information from that parish in another Genealogical Society of Utah product called the British Vital Records Index (click here to learn more about it).

Several guides to the PVRL are available in the FHL or FHCs, including an online research publication entitled The Parish and Vital Records List.