First Tranche of New Digitised War Diaries Online

[Seadog]

Thanks David that makes it much clearer and I fully understand the bit about data about data which unfortunately has not percolated down these yer parts yet and as such is not in common use certainly not in my local Asda!

Thanks again

Norman

PS What dies NSA mean (honest)

PPS I have no wish to divert this thread so no need to answer

[Stebie9173]

Not sure how much confidence this line from the Help on the Search page of the NA site fills me with:

"For example, to search for a battalion in the Northumberland Regiment, you need only search using the word 'Northumberland'. "

Steve.

[Tom Lang]

And just to 'muddy' the waters (again), take a look at the NA Discovery 'Help' page.

In the bottom right corner, there's a 'Featured Flickr Image' photo link of Judge William Evelyn Wylie skating in Switzerland, 1930.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help/discovery-help.htm

This takes you to The NA's Flickr page...

Does the NA have a copyright problem with that image?

Most confusing!

[David_Underdown]

Not sure how much confidence this line from the Help on the Search page of the NA site fills me with:

"For example, to search for a battalion in the Northumberland Regiment, you need only search using the word 'Northumberland'. "

Steve.

Assuming you're going from a war diary related page, these are "guided searches" automatically restricted to being within WO 95 and for online records only (put something in and look at the url http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/s/res?discoveryCustomSearch=true&_q=northumberland&_ser=WO+95&_col=online)

[Stebie9173]

Sorry, I was just quoting from the NA page, and the fact that it uses a Regiment that didn't exist for its example.....

Steve.

[David_Underdown]

And just to 'muddy' the waters (again), take a look at the NA Discovery 'Help' page.

In the bottom right corner, there's a 'Featured Flickr Image' photo link of Judge William Evelyn Wylie skating in Switzerland, 1930.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help/discovery-help.htm

This takes you to The NA's Flickr page...

Does the NA have a copyright problem with that image?

Most confusing!

It depends - this one http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/11433781593/ says "no known copyright restrictions", so basically you could do what you like with it. This is why I didn't want to get into copyright discussions!

Sorry Steve - do you have a link to the precise page? and I'll see if I can get the wording updated

[Stebie9173]

David, it is here:

http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/war-diaries-ww1.htm

It just sprang out at me, as I remember the days when I waded through 1,000s of the Northamptonshire Regiment MICs marked up as "Northumberland Regiment" - in fact I think they are still like that, though I use the Ancestry one these days which is , of course, perfect....

Steve.

[David_Underdown]

David

Not sure to what extent you wish to have "issues" reported to you via GWF, but I have downloaded 2 South Lancs Aug14 to Oct15, and interspersed with the May 1915 handwritten diary pages is a series of sheets of 1917 correspondence about supplies in Mespot, which don't appear to have anyhting to do with 2/SLR.

This has been checked out now. The war diaries in this case were on particularly flimsy paper, so (presumably) a contemporary War Office clerk glued the diary page to some waste paper to make it easier to handle. I understand the Mespot stuff is generally crossed through in blue pencil. The War Office seems to have been quite thrifty like this - anyone who's looked at any number of soldiers' papers will have seen file copies of letters written up on the back of previously used paper (sometimes you find useful casualty lists that way!).

[David_Underdown]

David, are you able to explain how the apparent link-up with Naval & Military Press works? They circulated a press/customer news release yesterday about forthcoming access to war diaries via DVD, etc.

We can only give a fairly general statement at the moment:

When our records are digitised, whether it is by us or by one of our licensing partners, the digital images are available for sale and licensing. As public records, our collections are never assigned exclusively to one publisher, company or website. Naval and Military Press holds a non-exclusive publication licence for WO 95, and we continue to encourage as many market sectors and specialist publishers to work with us as possible. The National Archives’ website remains the only place to search and download complete unit war diaries at present.

To unpack a couple of things in that a little, people may not realise that with licensing deals such as censuses and solders' records the licensing partner bears the cost of the digitisation process. There is usually a short period of "primacy" where they are given a chance to get a return on their investment before the fruits of their labours (the images, which remain Crown Copyright) can be relicensed to others by The National Archives. There's further information on different forms of licensing at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/commercial/licensing.htm

[Guest]

Would there be an actual list of all the war diaries available to download, and is there a date for, and list of Tranche No 2?

Mike

[Tom Lang]

You're doing a stellar job here David.

Well Done and thanks for all these answers.

Tom.

[spof]

Mike

Search the TNA catalogue in online collections for WO 95 and you'll get a list of all 2382 pieces available. I find it more manageable to search for WO 95/1*, WO 95/2* and then download each result into a spreadsheet. If you only want one of the first 3 cavalry or infantry divisions, go to advanced seach for 1 cavalry division or 1 division and restrict it to Search Within WO 95.

David posted a few days ago that the next lot are due in the spring.

Glen

[Guest]

Ah, thank you Glen.

And agree with Tom, regarding David's efforts.

Mike

[spof]

Forgot to add. You only need to go to WO 95/16* as that is the highest range of diaries online for now.

And I also agree with thanking David for his help.

[David_Underdown]

I thought I'd posted this elsewhere in this thread, but it could be in the other one under the centenary section. The ranges in the catalogue are WO 95/1096 to WO 95/1156, and WO 95/1227 to WO 95/1670 (the "missing" references - 1-1095 and 1157-1226 - are I think for formations above divisions ie, corps, army and GHQ, and for other theatres, probably includes lines of communications troops and the likes too, and possibly some overseas contingents - WO 95 does include diaries for Aussies, Canadians etc too as well as British units).

It's also worth noting the browse by hierarchy option within the catalogue. The citable catalogue references we're all used to include only lettercode (eg WO), series (95), piece (1096) and item (eg 1 - this is usually when a unit's diaries are broken down into smaller chunks). The catalogue in fact recognises 7 levels, lettercode, division, series, subseries, subsubseries, piece and item. Division is used to divide up records according to which section of the War Office they came under, subseries is (in the case of WO 95) for different theatres of war, then subsubseries is used to hold together all the records of divisions and similar.

So, if you look at WO 95/1096 - Headquarters Branches and Services: General Staff. (Described at item level), and look at the right hand side, you'll see a panel labelled "Hierarchy" (I've labelled the different levels within square brackets):

[root level of catalogue] All departments

[lettercode] WO Records created or inherited by the War Office, Armed Forces, Judge Advocate General,...

[division] Records of the Armed Forces from commands, headquarters, regiments and corps

[series] WO 95 War Office: First World War and Army of Occupation War Diaries

[subseries] PART I: FRANCE, BELGIUM AND GERMANY

[subsubseries] 1 CAVALRY DIVISION

[piece] WO 95/1096 Headquarters Branches and Services: General Staff. (Described at item level)

if you click on 1 CAVALRY DIVISION you'll see the catalogue description for the subseries, you should find yourself in "Browse by hierarchy" mode. On the righthand side you'll see the pieces within that subseries (which basically represent the units making up that division). There's a scroll bar to move up and down, and it only shows 30 pieces at a time, but you'll see there are arrows labelled "previous 30" and "next 30". Some of these pieces will only have high level descriptions, and will probably say "Described at item level", if you click on that (not on "details", as that will give you the full catalogue description for the piece) you'll move down the hierarchy, and will be able see the items that make up the piece. It's rather like double-clicking on a folder within Windows Explorer. You'll also notice that on the lefthand side of the page you can scroll through the subsubseries representing each division (and again there are options for "previous 30" and "next 30").

If you've actually viewed physical war diaries at Kew, each piece represents an actual box that you could order, items are (roughly) individual folders wrapping a unit's diary (for a particular period)

[Stephen Nulty]

I downloaded what purported to be a 1918-1919 diary on Friday and found that it was a 1915 diary for a different battalion of the same regiment.

I immediately clciked on the 'DigitalDownloads@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk' address and submitted details, asking either for the correct diary to be made available as advertised or for a refund to be processed immediately.

No response at all, not even an acknowledgement, so I have now posted the same message via the "Contact" page to which David provided a link early ion this discussion.

Will keep you posted as to the outcome

[Stephen Nulty]

24 hours on, still no response or acknowledgment from NA to either my email or my comment on the "Contact Us" form.

Methinks some llessons in Customer Service may be called for.

[Promenade]

Stephen,

Two out of the two diaries I have ordered have also been incorrect and have emailed the NA for a refund. If you read the small print they say they will get back within 10 working days - so no point holding your breath!

Joe

[Stephen Nulty]

Thanks Joe, I hadn't spotted that. We've probably downloadxed the same documents :-)

I think it is reasonable in this day and age to receive an acknowledgement to electronic communication. It is purely technical, doesn't cost anything and "reassures" the correspondent that their message has been received.

[Guest]

These have been checked now. In a small number of cases (for the website version - our preservation masters will only have had the straight image conversion I described previously), some image processing has been performed in order to obtain the most readable image. This is usually where the original paper was very thin and translucent and had faint writing on. Please do continue to report any images that are actually unreadable. Sometimes it may simply be the best which could be done with the original, but with this number of images there could still be the odd out-of-focus shot or similar that's slipped through.

Sorry David, I missed this, and thanks. I received a reply today

" I have checked the document and these 'negatives' are correct. I don't know the details but this is how the government department copied pages and were added before the records were transferred to The National Archives possibly as further information or to replace damaged or missing pages. "

Mike

Edit 10.05 am

These images can easily be converted to positive images using " paint " or other. Using Microsoft Picture Manager, " Auto Correct, save, Auto Correct save, a couple of times, and a decent image can be obtained.

Mike

[Stephen Nulty]

Well, it's now a week since I paid for and downloaded a diary which turns out to be a different Bn and year to that stated.

EMail sent to requested address and "Contact Us" form also used to request refund or correct diary

Still not a word from TNA, either in response or acknowledgment.

I wonder if their "10 day" service level includes weekends.

Just poor service, no other way to describe it.

[E Wilcock]

Any new initiative is bound to cause teething troubles - the NA has become wildly popular this week and I was told the car park was already full at 8.45 a.m. No doubt it will be the same for the lecture next Thursday. It is no different from when the 1901 census was released.

One thing I could not find out was how the on line presence of War Diaries affects people who want to read them (without charge) in the archive.

When my attempt to order a file via the catalogue in the PRO resulted in a reply that the Diary was not available to order, did this mean it is on line and can be read on a computer in the PRO, or did it mean that it is out of use being filmed.

I have always been useless at using the PRO - but if the censuses are anything to go by, it might be worth postponing First World War research for 6 months.

[David_Underdown]

Once a surrogate (ie a digitised version, or microfilm) is available, access to the original material is restricted. Part of the reason for digitisation is that the war diaries had got pretty tatty from 50 years of handling. However, if there is a specific reason for looking at the originals, the duty Enquiry Services Manager has the power to authorise original productions. The digitised versions can be viewed on the computers in the open reading room (without of course waiting for 45 minutes for paper to be delivered).

Nothing is being digitised at the moment so far as I'm aware, so either it was already out to someone else, or it was downloadable (or you were trying to order the whole piece where something has been broken down into items). If it's online you should see the option to "view this record", or from the main search screen select the option to only search online records, if nothing comes up it hasn't been digitised, if it has been digitised you'll get a hit.

It did seem busy yesterday, it was hard to find a seat at lunchtime, but there are also currently works going on in the staff car park which has reduced the number of spaces available there.

[Chris_Baker]

It was unusually busy at Kew yesterday, but I did not form the impression that it was because of the war diaries. The open area (screens and digital documents, etc) was about as normal but the First Floor Reading Room (original documents) seemed much busier than an average Thursday. No idea why.

[ypres]

Sorry if this has been posted somewhere already. For your interest, http://ww1wardiaries.co.uk/?gclid=CJnqsrGXl7wCFSTkwgod7XUAgA

JIM