POW records

[Thunder]

TNA have decided that the prisoner of war interviews (WO 344) from the Second World War which were transcribed by TNA volunteers should be made available ONLY through ancestry and not on TNA's Discovery catalogue. Why??.

https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/me ... commandos/

[meekhcs]

Possibly because Ancestry wanted exclusivity?

[Mick Loney]

You’ll find the same thing happens with FamilySearch films. If the ‘sell’ the rights to a film to the likes of FMP or Ancestry, then they block browsing access to regsitered users trying to access them

[Thunder]

TNA have said to me today that "This series has been digitised as part of an agreement with Ancestry; they have created the metadata and scanned the images. It is therefore their data and, in such cases, the metadata does not migrate to Discovery." TNA don't care about researchers but make researchers pay for access to the records, shamefull.

[AdrianBruce]

... TNA don't care about researchers but make researchers pay for access to the records, shameful.

I've said it before and I'll carry on saying it - those who want free access to historical data via websites never answer the question about how to pay the IT personnel who create and maintain the websites. Or the comms technicians. Or the support staff at the end of the phone.

[AdrianBruce]

You’ll find the same thing happens with FamilySearch films. If they ‘sell’ the rights to a film to the likes of FMP or Ancestry, then they block browsing access to registered users trying to access them

You have it slightly wrong way round. FS don't own any rights to the intellectual property on those films. That remains with the Record Office housing the originals. (By Contractual Terms & Conditions, not Copyright, by the way).

FS can't "sell" anything to Ancestry, etc. Instead, Ancestry etc. pay the Record Office for a licence to that data and normally pay for an exclusive licence to that data. Well, why would they pay anything to the Record Office if FS undercuts them with free access to exactly the same data? There's a standard period in the boilerplate text for these agreements that the exclusive period of access is for - not sure - 5y? 10y? (It's just boilerplate so can be changed).

What complicates / confuses is that Ancestry / whoever often then pays FS for the right to use its own films - but that's a separate item to the rights to the data.

[Mick Loney]

You’ll find the same thing happens with FamilySearch films. If they ‘sell’ the rights to a film to the likes of FMP or Ancestry, then they block browsing access to registered users trying to access them

What complicates / confuses is that Ancestry / whoever often then pays FS for the right to use its own films - but that's a separate item to the rights to the data.

Eh, isn’t that what I said? I never mentioned the rights to the data, just their film

[AdrianBruce]

... Eh, isn’t that what I said? I never mentioned the rights to the data, just their film

Ah - you were more careful than I realised. What led me astray was...

then they [FamilySearch] block browsing access to registered users trying to access them

.. because it's not FS that drives that blocking process but the Record Offices, and the driving force to that is indeed the data.

[Thunder]

... TNA don't care about researchers but make researchers pay for access to the records, shameful.

I've said it before and I'll carry on saying it - those who want free access to historical data via websites never answer the question about how to pay the IT personnel who create and maintain the websites. Or the comms technicians. Or the support staff at the end of the phone.

TNA is of course publically funded by us taxpayers and if instead of their 'woke' policies they actually got back to their core functions including cataloguing then researchers would be able to find information.