SOG-UK-L Archives

Archiver > SOG-UK > 2001-07 > 0994760121


From: Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake <>
Subject: Re: [SoG] Access to historical records in England and Wales
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:15:21 +0100
In-Reply-To: <004101c1091f$22996940$25e810cb@jeanette>


In message <004101c1091f$22996940$>, Jeanette Iredale
<> writes
>If you take into consideration how much money is poured into the
>economy from the wallets of foreign visitors to Britain, I think that
>considering the short time such foreign visitors have available to
>access the resources, then they do pay.
>
>For instance, two years ago I spent 2 days in the PRO, I spent a small
>fortune on books and photocopying alone. A local would have had the
>time to transcribe the information and would have been able to access
>most of the available books through thier local FHS or library. I
>think if you looked at it logically, it would probably work out even.
>
I do not deny your experience, but ask you to consider the following.
Most archives that I know in Britain work on a break-even policy when it
comes to charging for copies. The income from photocopies mostly goes to
pay for the copiers. These are imported from Japan, Korea and the US. So
whose economy were you supporting?

The good news for those outside Britain though is that the British
Government and the Heritage Lottery Fund are increasingly asking public
archives such as County Record Offices to digitise their holdings and
make them available over the Internet freely to all. Shortly, one hopes,
the SoG catalogue will be online with free international access, paid
for by the Heritage Lottery Fund (i.e. British Indirect taxes).

The Chairman of the Executive hinted at the AGM that the pressure on the
Library premises could possibly be reduced by greater digitisation of
its resources and publication of them to members via the Internet. We
await the outcome of the Society's IT working party in this respect with
interest.
--
Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake

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