Thank you, Mr. Johnson for enlightening me on something I did not know.  However, seems to me those different records still "remain almost inacessiable."  I guess I just don't know where to search.  And it still seems to me, that one should be able to ask someone in one of the libraries to exchange information.  They would gain and so would I. Thank you again, Jo Ann ________________________________ From: "dumfries-galloway-request@rootsweb.com" <dumfries-galloway-request@rootsweb.com> To: dumfries-galloway@rootsweb.com Sent: Mon, July 26, 2010 2:02:11 AM Subject: DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY Digest, Vol 5, Issue 91 Today's Topics:   1. Re: DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY Digest, Vol 5, Issue 90 (Gordon Johnson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:50:46 +0100 From: Gordon Johnson <gordon@kinhelp.co.uk> Subject: Re: [DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY] DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY Digest, Vol 5,     Issue 90 To: dumfries-galloway@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <4C4C08F6.8080406@kinhelp.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 25/07/2010 08:02, Jo Ann wrote: > Sandy, you said: " Genealogy is a very big earner in this county . . . ."? I >was > just wondering a few days ago why it is so hard to find any information in > Scotland on ancestors without shelling out moeny for it, unlike the States, > where many websites are free, and people so freely share their information > without expecting payment.? ** Jo Ann, the main difference is due to copyright. In the USA, the government does not hold a copyright on its records, whereas in the UK, the Crown (read Government) holds copyright in all national government records - civil registration, census returns, etc.. This means the government bodies can make charges for use of the material, or delegate this to another body (such as Scotlandspeople). They have discovered that they can make a lot of income through relatively small fees per item, and this (in theory at least) means that more records can be indexed, digitized, etc. and so made readily available without the taxpayer having to pay for this. If there had been no prospect of income, the government records would remain almost inaccessible.... Regards, Gordon Johnson. ------------------------------ To contact the DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY list administrator, send an email to DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY-admin@rootsweb.com. To post a message to the DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY mailing list, send an email to DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY@rootsweb.com. __________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY-request@rootsweb.com with the word "unsubscribe" without the quotes in the subject and the body of the email with no additional text. End of DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY Digest, Vol 5, Issue 91 ************************************************