[Bell Historians] woburn 1/4's

[Robert Lewis]

At 19:22 03/11/2013, Andrew wrote:

>This would seem a fair argument, but as is well-known in some 
>quarters, the attitude of Whitechapel to genuine requests for 
>information from their archives is in stark contrast to that of 
>Taylors. However, having one inadvertently caused offence by opening 
>that particular can of worms, I will make no further comment.

The bell founders are both privately owned companies and their 
archives are private property, which in some instances probably have 
commercial as well as historical value.  I think there is a tendency 
within some ringing circles to regard these records in some sense as 
'public property' with access 'as of right' . Surely it is entirely 
up to the foundries how and when they decide to make their archive 
material available to people and I think they are perfectly at 
liberty to either refuse access or make a charge, especially if 
giving supervised access is going to incur costs to their business.

With regard to Rod Bickerton's earlier point - we get a quite lot of 
requests at the RW to help with research of all kinds (particularly 
family-history related queries and background for tv/radio 
broadcasters) and occasionally it is possible to give a quick hint 
about where people might best pursue their search (eg via the Central 
Council librarian or Biographies/PR Committee, etc.), but we really 
don't normally have the resource to go hunting directly for things 
ourselves. Moreover none of our current admin. staff are actually 
ringers and if the enquiry demands some knowledge of ringing or 
ringers then it is likely to fall on my desk. I can (and often do) 
help as far as I can, provided that it is not going to interfere 
unduly with our weekly production work.

RAL
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