On 17 August 2011 12:01, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
So I would be in favour of a pilot, to see how it all goes. Criteria: on a medium scale; in a topic area that is rather clearly UK-centric, and of fairly general interest; and something that could be pointed to as an interesting use of money (not least for the OTRS mails that come in during the fundraiser). Visual content, not just text, helps for that, though myself I'm a text man.
Do we have anyone around who knows enough about the NRA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Archives) to give some sort of steer? I ask partly because of the existence of a Wikimedian in Residence at the NARA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Archives_and_Records_Administration) right now, who is posting to Wikisource about profile-raising things. It would be a help to know from someone informed how the "urgency" of getting archival material digitised is generally judged. What should be given priority?
Nationalised industries (with the possible exception of the railways).
==Advantages== 1)I'm not aware of any existing projects in the area so we would not be trying to get around an existing settlement 2)A fair bit of non text media (photos, diagrams, maps) 3)Fairly useful in terms of covering 50s and early 60s technology
==Disadvantages==
1)It's not clear where all the stuff is. While some of it appears to have ended up in Swindon other stuff got sent to local museums. Which may in turn have passed it on further for various reasons. 2)May be a fair bit of overlap with Bundesarchiv stuff 3)Cataloging may not be first class