30th January 2016  –   Online and at the The Linnean Society of London

Open Data the Key to Keeping Family History Free

Free UK Genealogy is trying to contact all volunteers who have collaborated with any of the three family history projects FreeBMD, FreeCEN,and FreeREG. Invitations are being sent to encourage them to register for a conference to discuss licensing the volunteers’ contributions as Open Data.  The conference in London later this month, will see the start of a consultation process with transcribers past and present, to discuss agreements that will secure their transcriptions as resources free to access by all, forever.

The conference on Saturday 30th Jan 2016 at The Linnean Society of London, will provide opportunity to debate the proposal to license Free UK Genealogy’s 327 million genealogical references as Open Data, safeguarding the permanent unrestricted access to and use of the data, in keeping with the organisation’s ethos of providing free access public databases.

Pat Reynolds, Executive Director said, ‘the conference will be more than just a discussion – we will be updating everyone on future plans, and have invited a number of fascinating speakers. With a large number of our 13,000 volunteer transcribers not UK based, we will be broadcasting the event live, and taking questions via email and twitter on the day. The conference marks the beginning of the consultation, and we want all our past and present transcribers to take part, as it is more than a rubber stamping exercise.’

The consultation period is expected to last until mid-March.

People can register for a place in person or as an online participant at https://freeukgenealogyconference.eventbrite.co.uk .