[Opengenalliance] frequency of communications and summary of activities

[Javier Ruiz]

Hi everyone

I am trying to establish what people in the list would consider the "right
amount of information". Our idea was to use this list to organise projects
and campaigns in as open a manner as possible and minimise usage of the
closed list for official project partners.

However, it seems that most subscribers are simply looking for information.
In this case it may be more appropriate to establish regular updates. How
often would you like to receive these?

I have started the first update here:

*Open Genealogy Alliance Progress Update W/C 9th may 2011*

*1 Media presence*
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Next month Your Family Tree magazine will feature an article about the
Alliance. It's difficult to predict the tone but hopefully it will be
positive. BBC Who do you think you are magazine will also feature a short
piece. I heard there may be more articles coming in other magazines, but
maybe others in the list can confirm this.

*2 Meeting JISC*
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Had a very positive meeting with people at JISC about open access to culture
in general and some possible collaborations.

*3 Clarification of Intellectual Property*
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The genealogy sector is mired in complex copyright claims over derivatives,
some of which may or may not be actually enforceable. Some people from Open
Rights Group and FreeREG (sister project to FreeBMD) are trying to bring
some clarity here. There is some work being done right now trying to compile
practical examples of access and copyright issues. The outcome of this is
yet to be determined but it could be a general guideline to sieve out the
complex cases that would need specialist support.

*4 Participatory Digitisation Tools*
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FreeBMD and its sister projects have been transcribing family records for
many years. Their tools need some updating but the new tools could also be
made available for anyone to start their own OGA project to transcribe local
records and make them available. We are looking at a specific project, such
as the School Registers, in order to focus the development efforts.

Besides meeting with JISC, we have input from some really knowledgeable
people from US and the GalaxyZoo team in Oxford University. The focus so far
is on tools for online transcription of structured texts for indexing. Other
elements will possibly include scanners and easy data handling and storage.

*5 Pilot digitisation project*
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We are considering putting the open approach into practice by engaging in
the tender for a digitisation of records. The project we are looking at is
the Schools Registers 1870-1914. We are meeting The National Archives in 2
weeks to see the actual records and ask questions.

*6 Economic Study*
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Still ongoing work to map out the sector in UK. We will post an introductory
text to the site soon.

*7 Website *
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The OGA website is still very raw. We have now created a blog section to
update it more frequently (this is the first such update), but we will also
create other areas for projects, etc. We have a very powerful web system and
we can add facilities of all sorts. Please let us know what you think it
needs.

If you would like to write up something for the blog, that would be
fantastic.

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It would be immensely helpful if you let us know what you think, and
hopefully if you want to participate in any of the activities.

I will post an amended version of this report on the site after your
comments (At least we will need to contextualise it for those who havent
followed previous emails)

best regards, Javier

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