STEPS are being taken to increase the capacity of the hugely popular Census Online website that went live on Wednesday, January 2.

The site puts 1901 census information on to the web for the first time and was developed by Malvern-based QinetiQ, the former Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA).

Demand for the information, which gives details of families, their addresses, occupations and socio-economic standing, has been more than 20 times the expected amount, resulting in the system crashing.

But a spokeswoman for QinetiQ said new servers should be in place by this weekend to help cope with the "overwhelming" public demand.

"The system and infrastructure of the website was designed to meet a carefully benchmarked demand level of one million users a day, and up to 1.2 million during surges," said Gerry Hardy, press officer for QinetiQ.

"In fact, there has been around twenty times the anticipated demand, hence the problems."

The project was led by the Public Record Office (PRO), which plans to put other census records on-line so they can be reached by a world-wide audience.

The task of digitising the original census images and creating an index to 32 million names fell to QinetiQ, which was awarded the 10-year contract in November, 1999.

The plc had to design a full suite of software tools to ensure data integrity was preserved, and complete.

Previously, the art of genealogy - tracing ancestors - meant time-consuming trips to a library or the county council records office to find information. Now, once the desired subject is found, visitors to the site can view a digital image of the original census return, or the transcribed details for an individual, for a small charge.

"The census returns are our most popular documents and making them available on the internet means that anyone can access information on their ancestors, the history of their house and their local area, as well as gaining an insight into the social and economic conditions of the time," said Alison Webster, of the PRO.

Regular checks are intended to ensure the system keeps up with demand, which is coming from as far afield as USA and Australia, as well as all over Britain.

The census returns can be found at: www.census.pro.gov.uk.