Ancestry to digitise WFA Pension Records

[keithmroberts]

8 million records - that is quite a lot. While I would have been delighted to see the state take responsibility, I can't see that any other country would commit the required resources to digitise British records.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, keithmroberts said:

8 million records - that is quite a lot. While I would have been delighted to see the state take responsibility, I can't see that any other country would commit the required resources to digitise British records.

 

     Very much agreed-  such a large bloc of British records would be unlikely to get an export licence anyway. But it does throw up one problem. Once digitised-what is the fate of the original paper material?  It needs a permanent home otherwise WFA will be spending all its earnings from Ancestry on just storing stuff that is not used. Somewehere,sometime a permanent home has to be found- and The National Archives saltmines up in Cheshire look the obvious candidate-with honour staisfied all round- TNA doesnt have to do the digitising, while the stuff would be secured. No other obvious candidates for deposit of the originals comes to mind.

    What happens to the paper records post-digitisation is quite an important matter- Destruction would set an unhappy precedent with regard to other bulk records- while a proper system of preservation and deposit might encourage other record blocs that might be lurking to see the light of day-IF they will be saved and IF they are likely to be secured long-term. I hope (and fully expect ) WFA to be on top of this- as a bad outcome may well mean that other record blocs go quitely in the skip or landfill. A bad outcome now might well prejudice the survival of record blocs relating to the Second World War, let alone anything still there from the Great War.

 

[rickpreston@nasuwt.net]

I am always impressed with the Australian information, but British Government has never really cared about disseminating information. Indeed their treatment of soldiers has always been poor. I will not comment on this governments thoughts or attitudes as it will be banned.

 

I personally am looking forward to using these records it will open up another avenue on the social history of the time.

 

As for the cost of Ancestry, well it is good value, for me as London is 3/4 hours by train away, certainly not a day return!

 

Patience will be needed for the  information to be digitized. I am sure it will be worth it in the end.

 

 

 

[Hedley Malloch]

I agree with GUEST - a physical backup is needed.  Once the information is given to Ancestry then it is a hostage to fortune.  They may decide to keep it - they may not.  Who knows?  This is a problem with all information sent to a cloud.

 

Unfortunately, were it to occur, their destruction would not set a 'precedent'.  We have been losing important blocks of information on individual soldiers since the 1970s in the normal course of weeding.  A particular loss for me has been the destruction of the majority of files on British army soldiers trapped behind the lines.  These were in the FO series at the TNA.  These were destroyed in the 1970s, the only ones kept were those with a legal or financial aspect.  Very few met this test; an important resource was lost and we are only now appreciating its scale.

 

The British army's pension records are another important asset.  I would venture to suggest that very, very few of even the most serious of first world war buffs have even the vaguest idea of how the system worked.  There is a book describing what was supposed to happen (Hogg and Garside; 'War Pensions and Allowances, published in 1918).  What the cards show is how the system worked in practise and allow comparison between cases.  Decision making was highly devolved and there are some wild disparities in the treatment of claims.

 

One difficulty with the cards is that the pension administrators developed their own system of shorthand notations which they wrote on cards when assessing cases.  When I discussed this with the WFA about three years ago, I was told that it was unclear what much of this means.

 

To assess Ancestry's value proposition, you might want to compare it with the pensions data the Irish government provide free to the world.  You can find it at:

http://mspcsearch.militaryarchives.ie/search.aspx?session=false

[Guest]

HM- We cannot cry over spilt milk.  The actions of the government-(OK, lamentable most of the time if you have the Victor Meldrew Gene like me) -were not designed to frustrate researchers in the second decade of the 21st Century.  As the British Empire and British state contracted post-1945, records of all sorts were culled in huge quantities- what has happened to the Great War stuff also happened to the Boer War stuff as well.

 

     BUT- big but-   no-one weeding in the 50s,60s and 70s could have foreseen the image digital revolution that we now benefit from. In the long-term, we are the only generation that has this problem. Previous generations were none the wiser- later generations will have the benefit of digitised records-although fewer of them as more becomes electronic anyway. How to preserve electronic records is an archivist's bad dream at the moment. Thus, we are unique in having the technology to play with and the tears to shed for records that have gone in our lifetime.

     I think how this bloc of records is treated is most important-it is likely to act as a bellweather for other stuff that may be there. Successful digitisation may be an encouragement for records to be kept by Whitehall if the office-wallahs know the stuff will be taken care of responsibly by others -and digitsiation masterminded by others as well. The obvious blocs are likely to be WW2 related-Look to the future on this.

   As an aside, a recent thread on this Forum suggested a particular bloc of records had been generated during the Great War- and as it relates to personnel, it is just possible  that some of it survives on closure.  Very highly unlikely as TNA liaises extensively with government dertments- but you never know. An FOI request is currently in progress with MOD about these potential records and I will report the outcome in due course

[Guest]

My comment re sending the records to Australia was a half-joke.

 

Mike

[ss002d6252]

8 hours ago, voltaire60 said:

   As an aside, a recent thread on this Forum suggested a particular bloc of records had been generated during the Great War- and as it relates to personnel, it is just possible  that some of it survives on closure.  Very highly unlikely as TNA liaises extensively with government dertments- but you never know. An FOI request is currently in progress with MOD about these potential records and I will report the outcome in due course

Can you elaborate on this, Mike ?

 

Craig

[ss002d6252]

1 hour ago, Skipman said:

My comment re sending the records to Australia was a half-joke.

 

Mike

Based on past History Mike it may not be a bad idea - that's not a dig at the WFA but the overall process of Government records.

Craig

[Guest]

39 minutes ago, ss002d6252 said:

Can you elaborate on this, Mike ?

 

Craig

 

    Hi Craig- Not sure I want to speak to anyone in your neck of the woods after the West Ham -Newcastle result.

 

      Actually, of course.

 

             There was query on another thread relating to the reports filed by returning POW officers  for the exoneration process.   Scans of the printed forms had the code "AG3" on them, suggesting (quite properly) that the monitoring  section was a branch of the Adjutant General's department- with the tag 3 denoting a branch.  In addition, the numbering system of the returned officer records did not tally with the normal officer numbering sequence, nor with any of the officer file sequence numbers in WO374 or WO399. Again, the printer's code of 11000 ordered up from late 1917, with 10,000 of these ordered in October 1918 suggested a potential officer run to investigate of c.11,000 officers. The man in question was mid alphabet and c.6800 in number from memory(Can't see thread easily at the moment-will track it down later) In addition, all officers had to file 2 copies of their account. One is often found in the officer file, which begs the question-where did the other one go?

    A visit to Kew  yielded no results either in AG records nor from the specialists on duty -   Now, as all the records would be personnel- and all effectively starting in 1919 (ie within 100 years). then there is a very,very,very slim chance that some of this material might still be around.  A  moot point is that if these enquiries were to exonerate officers as to the circumstances of their capture, then -statistically-there might be some who were not exonerated- a subject I can find nothing about-save that their records would almost certainly have been closed.

     Yes, it's a long shot-  but I put in an FOI request to MOD.  I have done it once before on a WW2 matter and found the MOD folk very,very helpful-  as they spend most of their time dealing with grumpy FOI requests relating to current military matters, the odd historical one seems to be the equivalent of a half-holiday. Thus, I have asked about possible AG records. Not expecting success-but I was trained to presume that records exist until one has incontrovertible evidence that they have been destroyed-which I cannot do for AG3 records.

   Worth the punt

 

Mike

 

 

[ss002d6252]

18 minutes ago, voltaire60 said:

 

    Hi Craig- Not sure I want to speak to anyone in your neck of the woods after the West Ham -Newcastle result.

 

      Actually, of course.

 

             There was query on another thread relating to the reports filed by returning POW officers  for the exoneration process.   Scans of the printed forms had the code "AG3" on them, suggesting (quite properly) that the monitoring  section was a branch of the Adjutant General's department- with the tag 3 denoting a branch.  In addition, the numbering system of the returned officer records did not tally with the normal officer numbering sequence, nor with any of the officer file sequence numbers in WO374 or WO399. Again, the printer's code of 11000 ordered up from late 1917, with 10,000 of these ordered in October 1918 suggested a potential officer run to investigate of c.11,000 officers. The man in question was mid alphabet and c.6800 in number from memory(Can't see thread easily at the moment-will track it down later) In addition, all officers had to file 2 copies of their account. One is often found in the officer file, which begs the question-where did the other one go?

    A visit to Kew  yielded no results either in AG records nor from the specialists on duty -   Now, as all the records would be personnel- and all effectively starting in 1919 (ie within 100 years). then there is a very,very,very slim chance that some of this material might still be around.  A  moot point is that if these enquiries were to exonerate officers as to the circumstances of their capture, then -statistically-there might be some who were not exonerated- a subject I can find nothing about-save that their records would almost certainly have been closed.

     Yes, it's a long shot-  but I put in an FOI request to MOD.  I have done it once before on a WW2 matter and found the MOD folk very,very helpful-  as they spend most of their time dealing with grumpy FOI requests relating to current military matters, the odd historical one seems to be the equivalent of a half-holiday. Thus, I have asked about possible AG records. Not expecting success-but I was trained to presume that records exist until one has incontrovertible evidence that they have been destroyed-which I cannot do for AG3 records.

   Worth the punt

 

Mike

 

 

Thanks Mike.

[timbo58]

I believe the WFA are making this digitised collection free of charge to their own membership -this was a key part of the license process in fact.

So anyone who is currently a member of the WFA anyway should be able to acess the data as part of their membership if they are not a paying member of ancestry, there is still, to be fair, a price to be paid however.

 

No non commercial organisation was going to be able to seriously take on any large project like this in any case, it must take up a couple of square KM in space just for storage and will take tens of thousands of man hours to digitise and decipher.

 

I echo the concerns over the continued safe storage of the PRC material, too many collections have simply gone to landfill or up the chimney elsewhere when either left to the over stretched resources of volunteers or the accountant driven grasp of government institutions and having a digital copy made seems to actually exacerbate this issue rather than comfort me.

 

Edited 28 December , 2017 by timbo58

[charlie962]

36 minutes ago, timbo58 said:

No non commercial organisation

The disappointment is that they've gone with an outfit that have frankly poor quality control over transcription, particularly on regiment or Unit.  FWR, FMP and Genealogist all seem to take much more trouble to produce a more consistant description. Did these other factors get considered, including ease of access which means success of a search, or was it a straight financial return for WFA? Did WFA insist on any extra quality control? How many people are going to be disappointed in their searches when there is in fact a record lurking?

Charlie

 

As if to highlight what I mean it has just taken me ages to find the bwmvm roll for this man and if I hadn't known that it must exist I might never have found it. How on earth did Ancestry produce such a transcription. Of course there is a whole thread devoted to their extraordinary transcription errors.

              

 

Edited 28 December , 2017 by charlie962

[keithmroberts]

2 hours ago, charlie962 said:

The disappointment is that they've gone with an outfit that have frankly poor quality control over transcription, particularly on regiment or Unit.

 

I'm sure that we all share the concern, but there only ever going to be 2 or 3 possible organisations able to make this sort of investment. Given that there are several types of document each style will presumably  have to be processed in a different work stream, probably with variants on the required data templates. The WFA went out to tender, and while next year's annual report might contain some further information about the final decision making process,  much of the deliberations will probably remain "Commercial in Confidence".  The joy is, that warts and all, these records have been saved, at least in digital form. I take the concern about the originals but given that MOD wanted to dispose of the lot, there must be a risk, even probability, that the cost of long term storage would be prohibitive.  I'm sure we will find out eventually.

 

Keiht

[timbo58]

I agree with Keith & I would certainly concur that WFA made great efforts at their due diligence in the tender process.

 

Be fair to the WFA -they are volunteers and it is to their credit they even took on the massive costs of storage of not just this collection but many others over the years, withouth them there is no doubt in my mind the first time you'd have heard of the pension records would have been when reprted in the press they'd been dumped into a landfill.

 

Because there are several pieces which all need to be co-joined to show a full record in many cases these have a unique challenge and opportunity to cross reference items and hopefully show up any glaring omissions or mistakes on indexes before they are published.

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, timbo58 said:

I agree with Keith & I would certainly concur that WFA made great efforts at their due diligence in the tender process.

 

Be fair to the WFA -they are volunteers and it is to their credit they even took on the massive costs of storage of not just this collection but many others over the years, withouth them there is no doubt in my mind the first time you'd have heard of the pension records would have been when reprted in the press they'd been dumped into a landfill.

 

Because there are several pieces which all need to be co-joined to show a full record in many cases these have a unique challenge and opportunity to cross reference items and hopefully show up any glaring omissions or mistakes on indexes before they are published.

 

 

   Not a criticism of WFA I assure you. But it does raise the problem of what happens to physical records after they have been digitised.  I would suggest that strong quality checks would be needed on the quality and thoroughness of  of Ancestry work before the physical records could be junked- it's a one-way process.   On the other hand, it is unfair on WFA to continue to store the physical bulk of records if they have no day-to-day use. And unlikely that TNA would want them on that basis-even at the back of a slt-mine.

     With chunks of WW2 stuff lurking, the debate on digitisation v retention/junking is a  looming problem, in which attitudes and actions on this project may set the markers for years to come.

[keithmroberts]

4 hours ago, voltaire60 said:

I would suggest that strong quality checks would be needed on the quality and thoroughness of  of Ancestry work before the physical records could be junked- it's a one-way process.

 

In a sense the real quality check is on the company doing the scanning. provided that all images are used there will at least be a significant safeguard.

The indexing and transcription by the  firm used for that process  will eventually at least be subject to the same user led quality control that we provide now when we provide corrections to the company. Given the scale of these records  I fear that the limited staff resource that reviews comments will be overwhelmed for quite some time.

 

Keith