[pd-discuss] Free BMD and PD Calculators

[Rufus Pollock]

On 23 September 2010 18:37, Jordan S Hatcher
<jordan at opencontentlawyer.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone

Thanks for the update Jordan. (I've also got some good news regarding
birth and death date data but that is for a separate thread ...)

> Not sure if this is a repeat of anything already discussed, but I had a chat with the Open Rights Group's new open data campaigner this week, and in addition to open biblio data, the birth marriage and (importantly) death records at the Free BMD database might be of some benefit:
>
> <http://www.freebmd.org.uk/>

That data would be much more useful if it were open ;) See the terms
and conditions:

<http://www.freebmd.org.uk/terms.html>

And further summary on CKAN package page:

<http://ckan.net/package/freebmd>

<quote>
1. FreeBMD is provided free of charge for personal research purposes only.
2. Access to the data held by FreeBMD is only permitted manually via
the search page. The use of front end programs or sites to enter
search parameters is strictly forbidden
3. Data extracted from FreeBMD must not be reproduced in any form.
</quote>

> As I understand it, there some additional work being done at the moment to make the BMD records held by UK government, more public, more accurate. and more accessible.

That would be of great value, especially if the data were open
(http://opendefinition.org/).

> Just a thought.  If you think there's some area of open government data that ORG should be working on, I'm sure Javi would appreciate any help.
>
> Javier Ruiz <javier at openrightsgroup.org>

I'll look to chat with him.

Rufus
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