Sharing and Publishing Wills (General)
by mrsbruso 
, Wednesday, March 09, 2011, 01:57 (5013 days ago)
I have sent for several family wills. In doing so, I had to sign a statement saying I wouldl not share or publish the information. For those who have shared wills on this site, did you seek permission to post them? If so, whom did you ask? Ideally I would love to share this information when it becomes available.
Thanks!
Sharing and Publishing Wills
by admin 
, Forest of Dean, Wednesday, March 09, 2011, 02:45 (5013 days ago) @ mrsbruso
If you would give us the following information about the Wills I would be in a better position to comment on your query.
- Which organisation are you obtaining a copy of the Wills from?
- What are the exact contents of the statement you signed?
- What years do the Wills cover?
Sharing and Publishing Wills
by mrsbruso , Wednesday, March 09, 2011, 13:19 (5012 days ago) @ admin
I completed the order form for the Gloucestershire County Council Archives. (The good news is that the fax didn't go through, so if I should be ordering the wills from elsewhere I will wait and do that.)
The wills in question are dated from 1845 - 1933, with the decedents all residing in Blakeney/Blakeney Woodside.
The language included in the form is:
declare that:
(a) I have not been supplied with a copy of the same material by you or any other librarian or archivist.
(b) I will not use the copy except for my personal research or private study and will not supply a copy of it to any other person, persons or organisation.
(c) (For published works only) to the best of my knowledge the work had not been published before the document was deposited in your archive and the copyright owner has not prohibited copying of the work.
(d) (For published works only) to the best of my knowledge no other person with whom I work or study has made or intends to make, at or about the same time as this request, a request for substantially the same material for substantially the same purpose.I understand that if the declaration is false in a material particular the copy supplied to me by you will be an infringing copy and that I shall be liable for infringement of copyright as if I had made the copy myself.
I understand this prohibits me from sharing it with others, however, I had thought to apply for a waiver once I received the wills. If there is another avenue I should explore I am open to it.
Sharing and Publishing Wills
by admin , Forest of Dean, Sunday, March 13, 2011, 08:35 (5009 days ago) @ mrsbruso
This is the same declaration used by the National Archives and many other County archives. The part that concerns us is:
(b) I will not use the copy except for my personal research or private study and will not supply a copy of it to any other person, persons or organisation.
My understanding is that they are referring to a copy of the original Will which they supply to you in an image or PDF format.
As most of us know copyright is a difficult subject to get your head around but as the copyright period for this type of document is for seventy five years after it is published, you can therefore transcribe the Will.
The way I see it is that if you transcribe the data within documents it is then acceptable to publish and share that transcript but not images of the documents themselves. In order to share the image of the document you would need to obtain permission of the owner of the the original Wills, which in this case is the Gloucestershire Archives.
We have numerous Wills on this Web site which have been transcribed from Wills held at Gloucestershire Archives so I do not see any obstacles if you were to transcribe the data of the Wills you are obtaining into a Word document and send them to us so they can be shared with others.
Disclaimer - The above are my personal opinions on the subject and may not be factual.
Sharing and Publishing Wills
by mrsbruso , Sunday, March 13, 2011, 14:53 (5008 days ago) @ admin
Thank you for looking in to this issue.