On 8/10/06, Susanne Belovari <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> This is a regrettable development in my mind: to charge for making
> national documents available, and thereby claiming private property
> rights to documents that were not 'owned' by anyone but an amorphous
> public until recently.

I strongly disagree. It takes MONEY to make this information available
electronically. for years University Microfilm (UMI) microfilmed
thesis, dissertations and othe materials. They charged for copies of
the film. I don't remember folks complaining about that cost.

The Ellis Island Foundation charges for printouts of the passenger
manifests, but you can look at it online.




> The Geneaological Society of Utah, a private organization, is trying to
> do the same: to get access to public registry records all over the world
> and have organizations and institutions sign agreements which allow the
> GSU to charge for value added records put online at some point in time
> in the future.

but doesn't that organization provide copies of the material free to
the organizations that grant access? How else is the GSU going to pay
for the bandwidth, servers, maintenance, software, personnel and other
miscellany involved in making this information available online?

If not for such operations people would be expending thousands of
dollars traveling from archive to archive conducting their research
and then folks would be complaining that they don't have the staff to
handle the researchers.

Seems to me I recall messages in the past concerning charging for
staff research time? How is that different?

feeling grumpy as I just heard that my employer is being acquired. on
to employer number 10!

-- 
Peter Kurilecz CRM CA
Richmond, Va

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