Hi Dave, Phil and List In message <035d01c2dc3c$fa31a060$0100a8c0@mshome.net>, Dave Newbury <David@davejo.freeserve.co.uk> writes >Hi > >Pour cold water on what?? > >Rod is not asking for transcribers, > >Just mails to test the water on how many want to commit to owning a copy of >1861 on CD The proposed project here at ACDB is to digitise the original census enumerators' books and produce them on CD. As a not for profit organisation the only thing we need to be reasonably sure of is that we can cover the initial costs, that is the cost of the films (*not* cheap!) and the time taken to scan them, make master CD's and to produce an index of *places*. As an indication the last county we released was Lincolnshire and I personally created the index for every place in the county plus a full street index for the City of Lincoln..... Working solidly every day it took me a fortnight to go through each one of 23,000+ pages. Herefordshire would probably not take so long, I admit. It would be nice to have included a full index of names too but that would have taken me a *little* longer to produce <g>. More on that to follow below..... > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "philbufton" <philbufton@whsmithnet.co.uk> >To: <ENG-HEREFORD-L@rootsweb.com> >Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 1:00 AM >Subject: [HEF] CD Books > > >> List, >> >> Saw the message about the possible census project for Herefordshire, >Shropshire & Monmouthshire. >> >> Not wanting to pour cold water on a good idea, but perhaps you might like >to consider a couple of things. >> >> If you really want to help to transcribe some census for Herefordshire, >then why not volunteer yourself to the 1871 census transcription project at >Freecen, see http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~slkarner/FreeCen/ for details, >this project has been running for about 12 months or so now and if you look >at the web page you will see that there has been some good progress, but >they always need help. This has the full backing of the Herefordshire FHS. Absolutely, yes. The FreeCen Project is one that Archive CD Books supports wholeheartedly. We currently loan CD's of individual pieces for some counties to their transcribers. It's great to hear that Hereford FHS support them too. >> It would be a pity to have 2 projects on Herefordshire census, neither >having enough vols to complete the work. As I mentioned, ours is not an indexing project, simply one to make the original images available to anyone who wants them at a reasonable cost. >> >> With our 1901 census project nearing completion, we will inevitably be >looking for a new project for our team and the 1861c is obviously a possible >option for us to do, Herefordshire that is, we would not do Shropshire or >Monmouthshire as it is not our area of interest. What would be ideal is for all three organisations, Archive CD Books, Herefordshire Family History Society and FreeCen, to work together on this to the common good. With all of our currently available census CD's we make a point of stating that users should actively support the county's FHS and (where possible) purchase the indexes from them. Nottinghamshire FHS is a good example, they actually sell our CD's themselves (for *less* than we do!) and they also sell their own index if required. If someone comes to us wanting a name index, we point them to NFHS. Cornwall FHS even allowed us to include their 1861 index on the CD's, with the only condition being that you couldn't print the index from the CD... Fine, no problem, everybody's happy! Other FHS's have been less co-operative, but that is their decision and we *totally* respect that. We would still urge buyers of the CD's to buy the indexes from that society. Incidentally and totally away from the subject, after that wonderful fortnight indexing Lincs I rewarded myself with a day at Herefordshire Record Office, something that happens increasingly rarely these days, and finally managed to link my own London and Middx ancestors to the Herefordshire Dewsall's in Wigmore and Leinthall Starkes. A real breakthrough at last! Unfortunately the last Herefordshire DEWSALL died in 1867 so the 1861 census won't help me that much, but I'd still love to see it get done for other folks. Best wishes Rob Dewsall -- ARCHIVE CD BOOKS - A not-for-profit project to reproduce old books on CD for genealogists and family historians, and pay for the restoration of books in record offices, libraries etc. Mailing list : CDBOOKS-L@rootsweb.com (for discussions) Weekly News : CDBOOKS-NEWS-L@rootsweb.com (weekly announcements & news) E-mail : enquiries@archivecdbooks.org Web : http://www.archivecdbooks.org