First of all, Who am I?

I just started doing research on my family last year. I've always wanted to know more about them and so I've finally gotten around to it. I've never been to Scotland, I'm not a professional genealogist (I'm a network administrator by trade) I'm not involved in any genealogy groups or anything. What I'm presenting here is only what I've learned so far, it may be completely accurate or complete bull@#$% but it seems to work for me so I thought I'd pass it on to anyone else interested.

What's all this Scottish Reference Information about?

The way I understand it, some part of the Scottish government started organizing the Civil Records (Births, Deaths and Marriages) beginning in 1855 and going to the present (or some very recent time).

These records were/are kept in "registries" or ledgers for each parish. Each birth, marriage or death "event" entered in a registry was given a unique number for that year. For example, the first child born in West Calder in the year 1858 has a birth registry number of 1. The second child is number 2 and so on. The same holds for marriages and deaths; i.e. the first marriage in West Calder in 1855 has a marriage registry number of 1, and the first death a death registry number of 1 and so on.

What's a Parish?

Basically a town, hamlet (or group of towns or hamlets), or group of houses, farms, whatever, that fall within a specific area that is "overseen" by a church. As the parishes grew, some were split into sub-parishes, others may have joined larger neighboring parishes. There are a few instances where parishes have changed the county to which they belong.

What's a parish number?

Most all the records are organized by parish number. Each parish within a county has been assigned a number. Numbering from east to west starting with the north counties and going south. Sub-parishes are sometimes denoted with a slash or dash then either a numeric or alphabetic 'sub' character: 168/1 or 177-b.