> From: Anne Shankland via > Sent: 18 December 2014 22:28 > > If there were separate fields for contributor and for study > registrant, then for Marriage Challenges the contributor could > be correctly set to show the membership number of the Challenger, > while the study registrant would still be shown as the data "owner". > How would this be? It seems to me there are two things that need to be covered: 1. Someone searching the database needs to know who to contact for more information, which may be (a) the contributor, (b) the relevant surname registrant for most MC data, or (c) no-one if the study has ceased to be registered, the contributor is no longer a member, or the entry is a cardinal point from an MC. It is straightforward to have one field for this, as we expect there to be only one contact per entry. 2. To manage the database it is necessary to know who 'owns' the entry and if that implies any restrictions on it, such as the current one of not searching on the registered name: this may be the contributor or the surname registrant or a former surname registrant or a marriage challenger or some combination of those, and those people may or may not be current members. This seems to me to be more complicated as several people may have an interest, and some may not be contactable. If contributors, especially marriage challengers, were to waive any rights they have to control how the data is used then this could be simplified. It seems to me therefore that we should have an agreement that makes it clear who holds the rights to restrict access on all future contributions to the Guild's databases, and what happens when contributors cease to be members. A call to members to sign up to the new agreement would probably clear a lot of the current data to be used in the same way, but the ad hoc way in which these things have grown is going to leave us with a small rump of data that cannot be used in the same way. Best wishes Andrew -- Andrew Millard - A.R.Millard@durham.ac.uk Chair, Trustees of Genuki: www.genuki.org.uk Maintainer, Genuki Middx + London: www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/MDX/ + ../LND/ Academic Co-ordinator, Guild of One-Name Studies: www.one-name.org Bodimeade one-name study: community.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/Bodimeade/ My genealogy: community.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/