On 19/03/2013 14:34, [email protected] wrote: > Why should access to historical records be free? It costs money to digitise records and put them online. Who should pay for it? Those who use the records, of course - that is, genealogists and family historians. Otherwise it would be all taxpayers footing the bill and that would be unfair. > Well, we all pay taxes that provide a lot of things we aren't interested in, which give us personally no benefit, or which we might actually be against. These can range from state subsidised sports or arts through to various wars. Governments choose what's free at point of use and what isn't. Sticking with genealogy: for example, I'm partly of Danish descent and the Danish government has had a project to provide scans of all available church books and censuses online and freely available. I'm Australian born and the National Library of Australia has a massive digitization project of a vast array of publicly held documents and artefacts on the freely available Trove site; of particular use to family or social historians are scans of newspapers for example. The Australian War Museum is making freely available military records - at the moment those for most soldiers of the Great War and earlier are available, although even the indexes for later periods give very helpful summaries (for example dates and places of birth and next of kin). And so it goes - even for the UK there are many freely available public resources, although these can often only be accessed at local libraries (and why should libraries be free? Not everyone uses them!); for example: the Times and many local newspapers, census indexes and scans, the library edition of Ancestry and many others. These are the publicly owned and publicly funded resources. This is before you get onto the growing number of volunteer projects. The best known are of course FreeBDM and Freecen[sus], but there are also cemetery records and monument transcriptions. Transcriptions of all Lancashire church books are online and searchable (and this must be true for many other counties). I could go on! Best Lloyd (who thinks he may have to spend a little money on Scotland's People as he's just found a possible place of birth for an otherwise missing ancestor's child)

The fact that I oppose my tax dollars being used for certain things I find repugnant is exactly why I would not then ask that other people's tax dollars pay for an interest of mine which they may find foolish. Loretta -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Lloyd Mitchell Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 2:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AYR] Genealogy is so lost-its being tie up by the company On 19/03/2013 14:34, [email protected] wrote: > Why should access to historical records be free? It costs money to digitise records and put them online. Who should pay for it? Those who use the records, of course - that is, genealogists and family historians. Otherwise it would be all taxpayers footing the bill and that would be unfair. > Well, we all pay taxes that provide a lot of things we aren't interested in, which give us personally no benefit, or which we might actually be against. These can range from state subsidised sports or arts through to various wars. Governments choose what's free at point of use and what isn't. Sticking with genealogy: for example, I'm partly of Danish descent and the Danish government has had a project to provide scans of all available church books and censuses online and freely available. I'm Australian born and the National Library of Australia has a massive digitization project of a vast array of publicly held documents and artefacts on the freely available Trove site; of particular use to family or social historians are scans of newspapers for example. The Australian War Museum is making freely available military records - at the moment those for most soldiers of the Great War and earlier are available, although even the indexes for later periods give very helpful summaries (for example dates and places of birth and next of kin). And so it goes - even for the UK there are many freely available public resources, although these can often only be accessed at local libraries (and why should libraries be free? Not everyone uses them!); for example: the Times and many local newspapers, census indexes and scans, the library edition of Ancestry and many others. These are the publicly owned and publicly funded resources. This is before you get onto the growing number of volunteer projects. The best known are of course FreeBDM and Freecen[sus], but there are also cemetery records and monument transcriptions. Transcriptions of all Lancashire church books are online and searchable (and this must be true for many other counties). I could go on! Best Lloyd (who thinks he may have to spend a little money on Scotland's People as he's just found a possible place of birth for an otherwise missing ancestor's child) ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hello List, I am rather puzzled as I was sure that the freecen site had the 1851 Census for Auchinleck but now I come to check just for one entry I can't find it. I know the Auchinleck 1841 is missing and I was doing some voluntary transcribing myself (for another area) when the 1851 appeared. Please does anyone know where it has gone? I haven't really been following the debate about free versus paid for genealogy but there is certainly information available which has been produced by volunteers, including, as far as I knew, Auchinleck 1851. Thanks for any clues. Best regards, Mary

Mary,       Auchinleck isn't listed on  the "census place", but Auchinleck is in there.  I just put Templeton for 1851, and it listed all the T. in Ayrshire, including the ones in Auchinleck.   Marc ________________________________ From: Mary Paton <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 7:48 AM Subject: [AYR] Auchinleck Census 1851 Hello List, I am rather puzzled as I was sure that the freecen site had the 1851 Census for Auchinleck but now I come to check just for one entry I can't find it. I know the Auchinleck 1841 is missing and I was doing some voluntary transcribing myself (for another area) when the 1851 appeared. Please does anyone know where it has gone? I haven't really been following the debate about free versus paid for genealogy but there is certainly information available which has been produced by volunteers, including, as far as I knew, Auchinleck 1851. Thanks for any clues. Best regards, Mary ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Mary - I am sure you will find that Auchinleck for 1851 is in the database, although for some reason you cannot select Auchinleck 1851. You can, however, search for the individual (putting in the age or occupation helps). I just tried it for one of mine in Dundonald (which also isn't listed for 1851). I put in his name and age and merely selected Ayrshire as the County. It found him all right! The FreeCen website says that 100% of Ayrshire is on line for 1841 and for 1851. It is just the Search feature that is at fault. Irene, Canada