Graceful apology, gracefully accepted. Even without the "troubled times" you correctly mention which must inform all government financial decisions for some time to come, I think the family history community must a) not be so greedy! and b) limit their wish list to the feasible and useful. Duplication of resources is unnecessary, updating a possible option. Tony Blair's open society schpeel required government departments etc to look again at making their material more easily accessible, for whatever purpose. Hence the Probate Division's digitisation of their indexes of Wills from 1858. A project certainly in train, but not yet online - their rep told me last year they were fearful of another "1901 debacle". That seems to loom large in the general psyche. Whether it is also informing the folks at the sharp end of DoVE is a moot question. Perhaps brightsolid and ancestry could digitise all the record office material up and down the land? Then get taken over by the government (like Northorn Rock!) and allow us all free access.... or perhaps not! Whichever resources are digitised and made available online, somebody is paying the costs involved. Therefore somebody has to pay to see, whether to a commercial company, or to a government department. I hope reality has set in that we have to pay someone somewhere for access to the records we each need for this hobby of tracing our antecedents. JK On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 5:08 AM, Gillian Kelly <gilliankelly@bigpond.com> wrote: > My apologies JK - I misread this to mean just an index. I do think this is > a very tall order and quite regardless of the cost and who pays I think > that in today's troubled times open access to such a huge amount of personal > information borders on dangerous. Gillian Kelly > >

unsubscribe