________ New Rules applied at Powys County Archives Office > > by Roger Scott Lewis > > I was rather annoyed and distressed to have full access to some schools admissions registers suddenly withdrawn from me at the Powys CAO last November, ostensibly under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998, although they come into the category of “unstructured manual documents” which are exempt from the DPA. They had for many years been freely available on the shelves of the CAO (so were already in the public domain, another reason for exemption) and I had consulted them on several previous occasions. I was told that a 100 year restriction of access would apply from now on - this is to all admissions registers since 1908 from 250 schools across the three counties - 500+ registers! To obtain access now one has to go through the Freedom of Information process or produce death certificates for the people named in the registers. I gather that the sensitive information that I and of course all other researchers must not see is the abode of the children, and the name of! the parent. Baptism entries in parish registers contain the same information but these are accessible without restrictions. I don’t understand the logic of imposing the new restriction on the schools registers but not on the PRs, or how the DPA can be cited to impose restrictions on documents exempt from the DPA. - can anyone enlighten me, please? > > By the way, in Cronicl 72, Dec 2007, Catherine Richards, County Archivist, offered her thanks to Angela Jones for transcribing the last Gladestry school log book dating 1940-1987. Several more have been digitized! No 100 year closure there then! > > It seems to me an absurdity to close the School Registers for 100 years when the same living people, same names, same dates, addresses and parents for the same parish are completely open and self-serve 6 feet away in the Parish Registers.If you wish to see them you now have to obtain permission through the Freedom of Information Act which can take 6 months to a year.These used to be YOUR public documents in YOUR public Archive and which is paid for by YOUR tax money.Now it is a private Archive! > ________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Create a handy button so your friends can add U to their buddy list. Try it now! http://g.msn.ca/ca55/211