[Geowanking] GB Historic Counties polygons

[Barry Hunter]

On 07/01/2008, Tim Bowden <tim.bowden at westnet.com.au> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 07:54 +0000, Andrew Larcombe wrote:
> > On 7 Jan 2008, at 04:21, Tim Bowden wrote:
> >
> > > Thanks.  Looks like I can probably get what I need from their wms.
> >
> >
> > FWIW, it looks like their wms server comes out of edina who are the
> > suppliers of the academic datasets as mentioned originally.
>
> Yes.  According to the visionofbritain.org.uk web site about page: "This
> web site was created by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project".  From
> what I could gather from reading both sites, it appears they have may
> have been created from separate funding projects though.  It would seem
> the historiccountiestrust.co.uk effort at digitising the county
> boundaries is duplicating what almost certainly already exists in the
> gbhg effort, but hasn't been made public because nobody funded them to
> make it public.
>

The more I look at visionofbritain the more data I realise is hidden
away in there (I didnt realise they had boundary data)

Now heres an off the wall idea (maybe ;), could WE fund them to make it public.

By that I mean ask them what would it cost to put the data in some
accessible form (possibly just as simple as a FTP server), then setup
a Coin Jar, so that people interested in the data could contribute
toward that jar. I've seen a similar project to liberate USGS maps.

Certainly I would be willing to contribute something towards it, and
I'm sure others would too. Should I approach them? (I have a few
contacts from previous dealings)

(Of course it could simply be they didnt realise the data would be
useful to others?)

-- 
Barry

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