Re: Ordnance Survey maps - free at last
I sent around the following message to NFBR Council on January 14th:
Can we discuss the current OS situation please, I've just added the following item to the Dipterists Forum Bulletin:
As a result of an online petition to the Prime Minister requesting “the Prime Minister to free UK Digital Mapping” (the “Free our Data” campaign) the Government has announced a new strategy for Ordnance Survey which will “make data more widely available” and Ordnance Survey “will reform to ensure easier access to its high-quality geospatial data and services”. Well done all concerned, this has been a lengthy campaign and we’re now anxious to find out how we can benefit from it. To view the press release from Communities and Local Government, visit http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1421671 dated 23rd December 2009 in which OS’s CE, Vanessa Lawrence tells us that amongst the possible range of free products are:
‘Raster’ products in a range of scales from 1:10,000 to 1:1 000 000 that will enable developers to produce an application that overlays their information on a map and to zoom-in from a national view down to the street level
This has an important bearing on Biological Recording. In particular recorders need to be be clear about what will become available and how they might use it to incorporate into their recording work - and perhaps get the OS maps for Recorder to function after all this time (see Recorder forums before daring to contradict me on this). An organisation such as NFBR or NBN needs to take a lead in this (particularly in view of the fact that the press release talks of further consultation) in order that they may use their website to provide clear guidance to potential users.
Trevor James was the only one to reply with
it would be good if we could think of things that NFBR might practically be able to do to help
so I reckon there's no further chance of debate from individuals there
Rather cryptically, the Minutes from the last meeting stated:
Ordnance Survey mapping (arising from issue raised by DS): action delegated to DS to push this forward
Does anyone have any ideas about where to push?
We could make a start on NBN to renegotiate the deal with OS now and get them to provide a new product that is no longer locked in to Recorder - and might have some chance of actually working with Recorder (see http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?id=14)
P.S. this same message is posted on the ALERC Forum at http://forum.lrcs.org.uk/edit.php?id=945 - Charles Roper is currently working on making that Forum an "ALERC members-only" site (in the main - there will be topics open to non-members too)