i recently visited the Australian National Archives website to get the military records for my great uncle, who died witht the ANZACs at Gallipoli. I was surprised to note that the Aussies have digitised their WW2 records and that they are available to access. Isn't it about time that the MOD and Government got on with doing the same for British WW2 records?
I think they are in the process of being copied. I think someone mentioned around 2020 they will be available to download. Ps bet I'm a 1,000 miles away from being correct.
At the risk of upsetting a few members who do sterling work copying files at TNA for members I think TNA is way behind the ball with digitising records. I know they have millions of records to consider and the digitisation process is not that fast, and certain subjects might take priority in the process, but I don't know when they started digitising. Many years ago I worked on a project at a Land Registry office and they were devoting half a floor of the building to a contractor who was digitising their records. I needed a copy of a LR record a few months ago and it was very straightforward to get a digital copy online at a cost of about £3 if I remember correctly. Obviously if TNA records were available online there would probably be a cost involved and, for large files, that could be considerable. On the other hand some WW2 files I have searched/copied recently are getting very tatty, whether due purely to age or (more likely) rough handling by researchers it is questionable how long some files will be suitable for public access. I think that mass digitisation should be done NOW if only to preserve a record of the documents before they disintegrate.
Ah, yes Andy, think you are right, But I think Service Records and TNA files generally should be digitised and (to some extent) made available online. I know there is the cofidentiality issue regarding Service Records but anything at TNA is publicly accessible - for free - and the original documents are suffering. We seem to be far behind other countries in this respect.
TNA won't do WW2 diaries in my life time, there's too many of them. It's taken a 100 years for the WW1 ones. Ancestry or Find My Past is currently doing WW2 service records.........Unless that's just a rumour I heard
