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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

UK OFFICIAL WW1 INFORMATION ONLINE


tamos123

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Dear All

Thought I would open up a discussion point around where we would like to see online access to official documentation to be in the future.

My bugbear is that compared to the both the Australian War Memorial www.awm.gov.au/ and the Canadian Virtual War memorial www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=collections/virtualmem we do not have access to such complete and free data.

Fully aware that the UK archieves would be much larger than the existing Australian and Canadian sites but does the forum think that a fitting memorial for the 100th anniversary in 2014 would be a complete (as much as possible) FREE archieve.....I find it rather galling at paying £3.50 a time for MIC...I pay for it through taxes already!

So therefore could you bring together:

Official history of the war - downloadable

Battalion, Regimental and divisional histories - downloadable

Battalion, Regimental and divisional diaries

CWGC site

Attestation papers

SWB info

POW data

MIC

Service records where available

Diaries, photos etc

Interested in your thoughts

T

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Brilliant Idea. Not everyone has easy access to Kew. It would be a great if you could get all availlable documents by searching the relevant regiment and service number.

Dave Roberts

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The idea is fine, but someone has to pay for it.

If the money has to be raised from existing tax reveunues then another service may well have to suffer. I don't think that WW1 military history has broad enough appeal for this idea to "fly" just yet.

I pay for it through taxes already!

You may well pay for the safe storage and physical display of MIC at the NA but not the online service.

Andy

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I agree with Andy - Great idea, but who's paying?

It's fine for all us enthusiasts to say that we will happily pay a few quid here and there for this or that, but you need to remember that a project such as this would require a significant seven figure up-front investment, such as that made to QinetiQ for the 1901 census.

As with all projects, a good business case needs to be made for it.

I'd love to see it come to fruition, but I won't hold my breath.

Steve

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Initial thoughts must be National Lottery funding as I view it rather than a specialist area than an integeral part of family tree research and a key education area for future generations.

Do we not owe it as a nation to ensure that future generations have the ability to keep WW1 alive and relevant?

Is anyone aware of future PRO plans at all?

T

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Great idea but I feel the hardest nut to crack would be the National Lottery given their track record of supporting military projects. Would it be possible, given a sufficiently large server, to utelise volunteer labour for this task? Us for example. This would bring the cost down considerably.

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