Hi All, As someone with a (small) finger in the publishing world and a large finger in the Internet publishing world, may I urge a note of caution with look-ups and the advertising thereof. At first sight, it's a wonderful idea for everyone to tell each other which books and CDs they have so that people can obtain the information the need without having to buy the relevant books/CDs. However......... People who publish books and CDs are entitled to expect a return on their investment in time and money, and that is of course what copyright is all about. So, for instance, if you had spent a year gathering together a large amount of information about Todmorden and published a book containing this information only to have someone tell the world that they have a copy of this book and will look up anything that anyone would like from the book, you would have every right to be more than somewhat annoyed. Exactly the same goes for CD roms too, though it's slightly different with most CDs as they usually (mine included) carry scans of out of copyright books: Even though the scans are of out of copyright books, in the eyes of copyright law, they are photographs, and (new) photographs are, in English law, the copyright of the person who took the photograph (with or without a copyright notice on the photograph), and so using the photograph to produce information for a look up is effectively the same as looking up information from a book which is in copyright - if you have the book though, there's no problem. There are some producers of CD roms who do not mind people advertising look-ups from them as they say it gives them free advertising, but the same people complain about lack of sales too......! It is a condition of sale of my CDs that the purchasers do not advertise look-ups on the internet, however this would not preclude someone from doing a look up from one of my CDs for someone who had asked for information on a mailing list and replying privately so as to not make it apparent that the own the CD. I have a note on my web-site that asks anyone with any objection to this to drop me a line, and only one person so far has done so, but this was to do with purchasing the CD for a library. At the end of the day, it is up to the owner of the book to decide if it is reasonable to offer look-ups from it. In the UK, copyright on a book exists for 70years after the death of the author (it's different for edited data such as directories). Somewhere in between the book being published and its going out of copyright, it goes out of print and so becomes un-obtainable except through second hand book shops. At this point I would consider it reasonable to offer look-ups (but this is only my opinion!). While the book is in print it is my belief that it would not be unreasonable for the author to sue anyone offering look-ups for breach of copyright. Now, putting my Genuki hat on: If you go on to the Genuki Yorkshire site, you will find a vast amount of information there for free (not a lot for Todmorden though). There are over 8,000 pages plus a large number of photographs of churches etc. Hopefully, all the transcribed information you find on the site is from out of copyright books or has been written by people specifically for publication on the site. Whilst it is me who maintains the Genuki Yorkshire site (with Angela Petyt who looks after Ripon), and a lot of the data was transcribed by myself or my family, there has been a large amount of time and effort put in by others too - such as Peter Nelson and Peter Johnson who did part of the transciption and all of the checking and correction of the two Bulmer's books. There is also a lot of data on the site produced as a "one off" article by individuals. If you feel that you would like to contribute to this large pool of data for your area of interest and the data you have is either yours or out of copyright, then I (we) would be very pleased to host the data on the Genuki site so long as it is of general interest and not family specific (i.e. no family trees etc - there are other places on the web for these). Just drop me a line if you can add information - your rights will not be affected and acknowledgements will be made as required. Your data will be added to my database, and so will have additional copyright protection under the database copyright act. You will find references to Todmorden on: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/WRY/Rochdale/ http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/WRY/Halifax/ and (Lancashire) http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LAN/Todmorden/ Best wishes, Colin Hinson In the village of Blunham in Bedfordshire U.K. Maintainer of the Genuki Yorkshire pages: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ Rare Books on CD: http://www.blunham.demon.co.uk/CDroms/ Baine's & Bulmers directories, History of Craven, Heywood/Northowram, National gazetteer of Great Britain & Ireland, Whelan's York & NRY