Caroline Bradford wrote: > Firebird wrote: > >> It's been released early because of agitation by a minority... > > The minority who agitated may wish to believe this, but frankly I doubt it. One man has been credited with being the prime mover behind the early release and (IIRC) has claimed the "victory" himself. > The National Archives was committed to ensuring that the complete census > would be available in 2012. By this they meant, not just the ability of > individual researchers to view the original documents at Kew, but the > ability for researchers worldwide to search through and view the images. > This involves a gargantuan task of scanning, transcription and indexing, > which was bound to take a number of years and cost hundreds of thousands of > pounds. My guess is that no company was prepared to put up the money to do > the work with no prospect of a return on their investment for 4-5 years > (would you, if you were in business?). So a deal was struck which allowed > brightsolid (the company which owns findmypast) to release the fruits of > their labours as they went on, bit by bit from 2009 until 2012 (the deadline > for completion). It is a solution which makes sense for everyone. This is no different from all the earlier censuses though, although the 1911 is very much larger than any of the other censuses. It may make sense for everyone but sense and governments are not happy bedfellows :)) As I understand it the census will be fully available with only the exception of the disabilities column before 2012, with that last column being revealed in January 2012. The exclusion of that final bit of information seems to be adding an unwarranted level of complexity and expense. > We should always remember that the oft quoted "100 year rule" under which > the 1921 and subsequent censuses were conducted did not increase the level > of privacy of the information provided. On the contrary - earlier censuses > were undertaken under a promise of complete confidentiality, a promise which > we have all been complicit in breaking for the sake of our own enjoyment of > our hobby. Ther have been some who've disputed that and said that the 100 year rule was applied retrospectively to the earlier censuses and some of those were released early too. There was a long discussion about it on soc.genealogy.britain a couple of years ago when the demands for the early release under the Freedom of Information Act were first raised. It raised a few temperatures too :)