When the Wills Project site first came on line i had excellent and very fast service from the Wilts Archives who photocopied and posted many wills and associated documents to me by return of post. This project is really a flagship one and a tremendous help to researchers...it really helped me with mine as i got two wills late 17thC. As wills are so hard to locate from a distance, and sometimes even in a record office, it is so unusual to find such a comprehensive indexing project. Considering that the Borthwick Institute has the wills for the whole of the North of England and they chare £10 for paper copies and take up to 28 days to send them. Wiltshire Archives are very realistic at £5 for an instant copy or less for a posted paper copy. Considering the potential leads in wills £5 is a reasonable price to pay for an instant download. The revenue will undoubtably be put to good use enabling more records to go online. Admittadly there are some digitisation projects that are free...the most notable is the Medway Ark project which has all the OPRs and more for free. But the more that goes on line the better for all. Anton > >

I have just purchased 9 pages from a newpaper, they cost 90p each, I will now upload them to my website which cost nothing. I have also photographed practically every parish record in Monmouthshire, fantastic images over 300,000 of them, cost me just my bus fair to the records offices. I have also photographed all the Tithe apportionments for the whole of Monmouthshire, cost nothing. plus several hundred thousand other documents Mike ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anton Mcloughlin" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 11:06 AM Subject: Re: [ENG-WILTSHIRE] Cost of Wilts Wills online defended When the Wills Project site first came on line i had excellent and very fast service from the Wilts Archives who photocopied and posted many wills and associated documents to me by return of post. This project is really a flagship one and a tremendous help to researchers...it really helped me with mine as i got two wills late 17thC. As wills are so hard to locate from a distance, and sometimes even in a record office, it is so unusual to find such a comprehensive indexing project. Considering that the Borthwick Institute has the wills for the whole of the North of England and they chare £10 for paper copies and take up to 28 days to send them. Wiltshire Archives are very realistic at £5 for an instant copy or less for a posted paper copy. Considering the potential leads in wills £5 is a reasonable price to pay for an instant download. The revenue will undoubtably be put to good use enabling more records to go online. Admittadly there are some digitisation projects that are free...the most notable is the Medway Ark project which has all the OPRs and more for free. But the more that goes on line the better for all. Anton > > ------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.15/1923 - Release Date: 29/01/2009 07:13

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:44 AM, mike john <[email protected]> wrote: > I have just purchased 9 pages from a newpaper, they cost 90p each, I will > now upload them to my website which cost nothing. > I have followed this conversation and this was the one comment that stood out for me. If a newspaper or the local records office makes information available, for a fee or otherwise, I suspect they don't want people distributing it to all and sundry. If they do it for a fee, the reason is obvious, but even if they do it for free, they may want to track how many people use the service so they can continue to get funding for it. I found the argument that building and maintaining a website for these documents can be done for next to nothing to be ignorant and unhelpful. Someone has bought into the hype all you need is a PC and phone line to compete against the BBC . . . . The mention of "my website which cost nothing" is disingenuous. It costs *him* nothing but somewhere someone is paying for electricity, bandwidth, support staff, rent, etc. Whether it's through advertising, the scourge of the modern age, or other people's subscription fees, there are costs and payments going on. But most disturbing was the sense of entitlement, the notion that once someone has done the work -- at taxpayer expense -- of digitizing these records, that they can then be reproduced and copied for free. Even if the costs are covered early on, additional funds may be used to tackle other projects, other records. Again, being able to track what people use most often can help guide future projects. On this side of the pond, we hear people grumble the government services should be run like a business, but what happens when they try to recover their costs? And if you are aware of anyone who had gotten rich in public service, I'd like to hear about it. I'm not aware of any librarians or county council staff who have retired to stately homes . . . . -- Paul Beard / www.paulbeard.org/ <paulbeard.org> Samuel Goldwyn - "I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it."