Portal talk:Victoria County History

Potential collaboration with british-history.ac.uk

british-history.ac.uk has full text for many volumes which we can't, due to copyright. However they don't have full text for many volumes which are in the public domain. Perhaps we could inquire to these folk which transcription projects they have not yet started, so we could do those volumes and give them the text.

Here is a list of the PD volumes which they don't have full text for, and archive.org does have a DJVU for, with signifying that this volume does not contain a translation of the Domesday survey, and means I can't quickly find an existing transcription on the 'net:

• Bedfordshire Index (1914)
• Berkshire, Volume 1
• Cornwall, Volume 1
• Cumberland, Volume 1
• Derbyshire, Volume 1
• Dorset, Volume 3 (this may not be PD?)
• Durham, Volume 1
• Essex, Volume 1
• Herefordshire, Volume 1
• Hertfordshire, Volume 1 ; Volume 4 (their transcription is incomplete)
• Kent, Volume 1
• Lancashire, Volume 1
• Leicestershire, Volume 1
• Norfolk, Volume 1
• Northamptonshire, Volume 1
• Nottinghamshire, Volume 1
• Staffordshire, Volume 1
• Suffolk, Volume 1
• Surrey, Volume 1
• Sussex, Volume 1
• Warwickshire, Volume 1
• Worcestershire, Volume 1
• Yorkshire, Index

John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:22, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying to your message on my talk page as quickly as I should. To clarify: would the intent of getting in touch with them be to let them know we're working on transcriptions in case they want a copy, or to ask for copies where they already have the transcriptions, or to seek their support to recruit more people to help proofread these works? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Any and all of the above, and more! ;-)

They will always have a better collection than Wikisource, because we can't host the volumes which are under copyright. This is their domain; the best results is if we are able to help them expand their resource.

They may know that someone is already working on transcribing some of the above volumes; in which case we would not want to duplicate existing effort, so we would direct our efforts to volumes which nobody is working on.

They may know that one of their transcription projects is stagnant, and they may be willing to give us the text of the pages which have been transcribed.

They may have strategic reasons for asking us to focus our efforts on one of the above volumes; if so, I'd be keen to ensure that we prioritise our work accordingly.

I expect that they would be keen to accept our transcription, but they may have rules about the transcription which we need to follow in order for it to be useful for their collection.

John Vandenberg ^(chat) 23:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)