On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 14:43 +0000, Barry Hunter wrote: > On 07/01/2008, Tim Bowden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 07:54 +0000, Andrew Larcombe wrote: > > > On 7 Jan 2008, at 04:21, Tim Bowden wrote: > > > > > > > Thanks. Looks like I can probably get what I need from their wms. > > > > > > > > > FWIW, it looks like their wms server comes out of edina who are the > > > suppliers of the academic datasets as mentioned originally. > > > > Yes. According to the visionofbritain.org.uk web site about page: "This > > web site was created by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project". From > > what I could gather from reading both sites, it appears they have may > > have been created from separate funding projects though. It would seem > > the historiccountiestrust.co.uk effort at digitising the county > > boundaries is duplicating what almost certainly already exists in the > > gbhg effort, but hasn't been made public because nobody funded them to > > make it public. > > > > The more I look at visionofbritain the more data I realise is hidden > away in there (I didnt realise they had boundary data) >
There's lots there. Two hundred years of census data, boundaries for almost all of the census areas over that time, scans of countless maps. > Now heres an off the wall idea (maybe ;), could WE fund them to make it > public. > I'm sure it's worth pursuing. Given the work was publicly funded, I imagine the costs *shouldn't* be too much beyond the cost of provision. There is a note on both sites that if you're not academic don't bother asking for the data, unless you're interested in a commercial arrangement. Perhaps they have visions of reaping huge dividends from their publicly funded work. > By that I mean ask them what would it cost to put the data in some > accessible form (possibly just as simple as a FTP server), then setup > a Coin Jar, so that people interested in the data could contribute > toward that jar. I've seen a similar project to liberate USGS maps. > > Certainly I would be willing to contribute something towards it, and > I'm sure others would too. Should I approach them? (I have a few > contacts from previous dealings) > Certainly worth a shot, but I suspect there's a decent dose of academic politics to be dealt with before it pays off. Call me a sceptic, but I can't see them giving up something of unique value too easily. It'll be a long road methinks. I suspect the nascent UK chapter of OSGeo would also like to get involved in such an effort. > (Of course it could simply be they didnt realise the data would be > useful to others?) > Oh, I'm sure they have a well tuned sense of just how useful it is. Tim Bowden _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
