Guy makes an important point (below). Neither HM Government nor Findmypast are under any obligation to digitise and transcribe recordsets like these.
It has to be worth their while. I found it interesting to read the
tender document: TNA's/HMG's liability/commitment extended only to making available a "secure location" for scanning, while everything else was carried out (to TNA's specifications) at the risk and cost of FindMyPast. From that tender document, it also looks like FindMyPast pays TNA royalties for use of the Register.
If FindMyPast don't see much of a return on their investment, then will they risk doing it again?
I'd also guess that the sooner FindMyPast have recovered a certain proportion of their costs, the sooner the Register will be included in subscriptions, which is when we can start looking up those niggling outer branches on our family trees that it's not worth spending money on, but it's nice to complete.
Yes, it costs money - that can't be denied. And the 1939 Register isn't cheap. But it's cheaper than the £25 FOI requests you used to have to make to get information from the Register, and it could probably be argued that if it weren't for all those people submitting FOI requests re the Register, the Government wouldn't have been spurred into action, in putting its digitization and publication out to tender in the first place.
Can I make a request that everyone who uses the reference number to locate a family on the 1939 National Registration purchase an image of the family, if it is the correct one they are searching for.
If they do they will help not only themselves and current family historians or genealogists but future ones as well.
Why do I say this, they help themselves as the images carry additional information that has not been transcribed.
They help future genealogists by encouraging big companies to invest millions in high risk digitisation of records, if these companies do not see a return they will not take the risk in future.
At present only Findmypast is taking the risk in digitising these huge databases, companies such as Ancestry sit back until all the hard work and risk has been taken then cream off the profits when the records are licenced relatively cheaply.
Companies will only invest if they can justify the investment to their shareholders, if they cannot do that we will not see the benefit in the future of new records to research on line.
Cheers
Guy
