Comments on: Your Archives Update

By: Gavin Robinson

Gavin Robinson — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:42:07 +0000

I said pretty much the same thing in the post that this is following on from (see the “last week” link at the start”). Looking back now I don’t know why I bothered complaining about the terms of use. Ironically the only thing stopping me from contributing now is lack of time!

By: Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:01:20 +0000

The National Archives are good guys, tho. Here they are, engaging with the public, doing their best to make stuff available, to promote access to archives, using a Wiki. They allow us to bring in digital cameras, thereby getting copies made of unique documents. They respond quickly and positively to queries.

It would be nice to see any of the above being undertaken by the British Library with respect to their collection of handwritten copies of classical texts from the renaissance and before. So far they don’t seem to ‘get’ the internet at all. Manuscript libraries are ridiculously hostile to the idea of ‘their’ stuff going online.

So all praise to the NA. GDL would be good if they could do it, tho.

By: Victoria’s cross? History in the Internet «

Victoria’s cross? History in the Internet « — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:58:06 +0000

[...] with the National Archives website about the lack of RRS feed for their regular podcast series. Gavin Robinson has also been engaged in an ongoing debate Your Archives, a wiki-based website set up by the UK [...]

By: Britblog Roundup No 120 - Philobiblon

Britblog Roundup No 120 - Philobiblon — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 22:39:05 +0000

[...] in question got a quick response from a government institution, and even a substantive one, when he questioned the conditions of use of a potentially excellent National Archive [...]

By: Gavin Robinson

Gavin Robinson — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:53:59 +0000

I know of quite a few people who would debate how much value has been added to the Medal Index Cards in Documents Online, but that’s another issue. I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to the microfilm.

By: Chris Williams

Chris Williams — Thu, 31 May 2007 11:02:30 +0000

I was just checking out the ramifications of Crown Copyright for a book project I’m working on. Here’s how I understand it:

For public unpublished records, Crown Copyright is usually waived, see:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advice/crown-copyright/copyright-guidance/copyright-in-public-records.htm

For public published records, it generally isn’t, but you can reprint them with a relatively straightforward ‘click-use licence’, which takes about ten minutes to get:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/click-use/index.htm

There are different types of click-use licence, one of which is the ‘value-added one’, which you get to pay to use, under certain circumstances. Quite a lot of the NA’s database output is listed as ‘value-added’.

Let’s blame the Treasury for this Bad Thing, as is traditional.