The Open Genealogy Alliance divides the family history community.
The call for more free and open access to genealogical data is fine in principle (what Family Historian could argue against it?) . But access doesn’t come free and one wonders who, in a time of severe economic constraint, is going to pay to make more records available by investing in infrastructure and investment in digital technology on behalf of what are essentially hobbyists? Hence the ideas put forward by the Open Genealogy Alliance are written off by some as more aspirational than achievable.
Others feel passionately that the “pragmatists” have missed the point. As one SoG member explained to me, “the aims of Open Genealogy are not dissimilar to the Open Source Movement which is “a broad-reaching movement comprised both officially and unofficially of individuals who feel that software should be produced altruistically” [to quote Wikipedia] which is open to all, contributed to and funded by volunteers!.”
The partners behind the Open Genealogy Alliance are the Open Rights Group, the Open Knowledge Foundation and Free BMD. The Society of Genealogists recognized the sterling efforts of the Free BMD by awarding it the Society’s Prince Michael of Kent award for outstanding contributions to genealogy in 2007. The voluntary effort behind this venture (which also includes census and register offshoots) is remarkable. However it does receive support from the commercial sector in free hosting services and webs presence. Is this a cynical manipulation of the community by Ancestry? The commercial sector is going as fast as it can to digitize records and we have seen that this is now an extremely lucrative business. But is this really the re-privatization of genealogical data? That’s a strong word used by the Alliance. If I contrast the digital images of wills provided on TNA’s Documents Online with the SoG’s images of Bank Of England Will abstracts now scanned and available on Findmypast can I hand on heart say I could rely on the Public Sector to provide the quality I want? As a member of the National Council on Advisory Records I hear of TNA’s work (having subsumed the Office of Public Sector Information) in providing models for licencing government data. Open up the data and the community will create innovative ways of using it far beyond the imagination of civil servants. But the Open Government Licence excludes personal data, coats of arms and anything that constitutes identity document like passports or birth certificates. The Open Genealogy Alliance certainly needs to look at the legislative straight jacket that inhibits genealogical information in England and Wales. Does Scotland’s People’s exclusive and expensive contract for use of the Scottish census images help the genealogist?
The commercial sector itself uses voluntary effort to achieve more transcription and indexing. Thousands of people contribute by transcribing records made available openly online by Familysearch or Ancestry’s World Record. The Society of Genealogists uses volunteer effort from its members who index and transcribe and indeed donate data that we can make available for income – via our member’s area so we can continue to support the activities of the Society and its Library. Are we exploiting that voluntary effort? Note the commercial sectors interest in genealogy is largely in the English Speaking World. Look at European genealogy which by comparison has very little commercial investment in it records and see how far behind it is. Can one really argue that it is only the commercial sector that restricts access to genealogical data by creating an expensive payment barrier? If the tax payer isn’t going to foot the bill then we may have no choice but to consider voluntary effort and the Big Society? Exclusive licence agreements for making records available certainly play into the hands of the big companies. TNA and other record offices make millions from these licences and commercial agreements, but they need money too. The SoG works in exactly the same way but we don’t make millions so we are also trying the voluntary approach too. I’ll let you know how we get on.
Visit the open genealogy alliance website to find out more about its ideas
© 2011, Society of Genealogists. All rights reserved.
Tagged with: family history • genealogy • Open Genealogy Alliance
Filed under: Family History News • Open Genealogy Alliance
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Dear friends
As one of the co-ordinators of the Open Genealogy Alliance I am very happy to see that the issues are being debated, although I would hope that it’s not such a divisive matter.
Generally, the benefits of opening up genealogical data — so it can be shared, combined and built upon to develop new information and services — are not questioned. As you rightly point out, the main issue of concern for hobbyists and citizens is the sustainability of the sector. However, we believe that there is a confusion between enabling particular efforts of digitisation of archival materials and the long term viability of the sector.
The bulk of genealogical information is public information, and as such I am sure we all agree that any restriction on access should be exceptional. This is taken very seriously in relation to on-site access, and few if any archives or registers charge access fees. Our fundamental premise is that citizens of the Internet age expect this principle of open access to extend to digital materials online, not to have a completely different value system based on paid for access.
The very real costs of digitising materials to be available online could be borne in a variety of ways. Governments have generally a duty to make available cultural materials including genealogical data. We must remember that in other areas — such as geographical information — the policy of the coalition government is making public data freely available in order to generate innovation.
If institutions supplement limited public funds by forming partnerships with private organisations, all we are saying is that the agreements should be carefully constructed to maximise the original organisational mission of public access archives or educational charities. This is a not prescriptive principle.
In practice, this means that after the costs of digitisation have been covered — including the commercial partners’ expectation for a reasonable profit — the digital materials should probably be made widely available as soon as possible.
The costs involved in the dissemination of digital materials are very different from the costs of digitisation. The marginal costs of online digital materials (the cost of producing one new copy) are very low, and decreasing every day. We should take a hard look at what it takes keeping the materials online, and look at what business models could sustain these.
This is one thing we would like to clarify: we are not anti-business per se, we just highlight issues with what we believe are outdated business models based on data hoarding. But we are not particularly unique on this, we are just applying the same logic that has seen changes in many other sectors.
The market on CDs is probably the best example of how things are moving on, with or without us. Music CD sales have plummeted in the past few years, with Rock holding a bit better than other genre because of the older demographics of the buyers. The Apple Ipad does not even have a CD slot. A model based on CDs does not look very sustainable nowadays.
And it’s not just a matter of formats. The whole notion that data is something that you have to keep in your computer, or in shelves full of CDs, is currently being challenged. Data is increasingly seen as an always-on service you expect to be able to receive on your desktop, mobile phone or as part of your social media platform. Of course many commercial companies have already clocked this; for example Ancestry’s co-founder Paul Allen is now developing exclusively Facebook applications.
In your blog you also raise many other issues we are exploring, such as the role of volunteers, quality, licensing, etc. Actually, you managed to bring up so many interesting things that it would be impossible to cover everything here. We will be very happy however to continue exploring these and discuss any concerns people may have.
Please just drop us a line through our site http://www.opengenalliance.org