[open-humanities] London Hearth Tax Database

[John Levin]

Hi,

The London Hearth Tax database has just been released:
http://ihr-history.blogspot.com/2011/03/london-hearth-taxes.html

This is a really important and useful resource for studying restoration 
(1660s) London. But: it's in a proprietary format (MS Access), the 
supporting docs similarly in .doc format, and the license for the 
dataset extends to no more than "Available to public."
(The online version at 
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/catalogue.aspx?type=2&gid=54
seems to be covered by quite a different - and frankly horrendous - license:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/terms.aspx )

Libre Office can't seem to handle the database - that might be due to 
mistakes on my part, but even if so, it means the database is not easily 
usable without proprietary software.

So: anyone else interested in pushing for getting this data released 
properly? Any suggestions as to how to take matters further?

John

-- 
John Levin
http://www.anterotesis.com
johnlevin at joindiaspora.com
http://twitter.com/anterotesis