Can we use WikiTree as a repository of source files?

Question

We have a particularly cumbersome situation for sources for Eastern Bohemia (Královéhradecký kraj, Pardubický kraj). The State Regional Archives in Zámrsk provide free access to their scanned church books but in a very round-about way: One has to first identify the parish in a rather large pdf file, then the relevant church book, which then can be downloaded as a zip file and then the relevant page can be accessed as a jpeg. I have resorted to the following sourcing as an example:

Státní oblastní archiv v Zámrsku, Parish Register Hradec Králové, [http://88.146.158.154:8083/051-00007.zip sign. 51-7 matrika NOZ 1734-1753], image 00101. This link downloads a zip file containing the image for free. There is no other online access.

Would it be at all feasible to create a Free-Space Profile and deposit the unzipped church book files there in order to be able to link directly to the church book page needed? Or would the potentially large space requirements rule that out from the beginning?

Comments

Helmut, I see that this question is about to scroll off the first page and nobody from the team has yet responded.  I suggest that you add improvements to your tags to get their attention.

Answer 1

You might be better off to offer these files to Family Search!! That way they would be freely available and not disappear behind a paywall.

Comments

According to the State Regional Archives in Zámrsk FamilySearch has the information in microfilm for quite a long time but has not made them available online.

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@Helmut

Searching the Familysearch catalog for Zámrsk gives 10 entries, like Czech Republic, Ústí nad Orlicí, Zámrsk, Zámrsk, church records, 1683-1903

I am not familiar with the area, so don't know if it is relevant.

Edit (extended Familysearch catalog entries)

There are over 1,500 Familysearch catalog entries with (possibly limited) online access for State Regional Archives. Zámrsk (Czech Republic)

Answer 2

I hope the answer from the team is a positive one because I think what Helmut outlined is probably the best available way to do it.

In case it is not possible to do on WikiTree, I can offer server space for such a repository.  Helmut, let me know if you want to do it this way.

Answer 3

I have downloaded quite a number of these files (the zip files), extracted them, and consequently have thousands of these images. Each image is given a unique name.

I would cite them differently: I would cite the specific church book: parish (town and church name, if known), volume, type (eg, baptisms), specific page. Also include the name of the archive. I think the link for the film is optional (I have no opinion either way).

As far as creating a place to store them, I think consultation with the Zamrsk archive would be essential before anything is done.

What might be a better approach is to link to, or download the catalog of all the church books, provided there are no terms of service or copyright issues. Discussing this with the archive should also be done.

Note for Robynne: I have used resources at a number of the Czech Archives, and they have all been without cost.

Note to whom it may concern: the catalog is about 2500 pages, covers hundred and hundreds of towns/parishes, and there are many files per parish. The files are all quite large. Thus, this could take a lot of computer storage.

Comments

Státní oblastní archiv v Zámrsku (name of archive), Parish Register Hradec Králové (parish), [http://88.146.158.154:8083/051-00007.zip sign. 51-7 (volume) matrika NOZ  (type: N=baptism, O=marriage, Z=death) 1734-1753] (time frame), image 00101 (image number as listed in zip file).

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Storage space doesn't scare me - I've got plenty available if y'all want to go that route - just say the word and I will set the space aside with an index page to link to each record and set whoever is going to upload it with access to do that and to edit the index page to add the titles/links to it.

Answer 4

I think what George is saying makes sense:  Rather than zip files here (many are wary of them as they may contain virii), create a freespace page with links to the parish files on the government server.  It would make them more readily accessible, esp. to those who don't speak the language, and would be an invaluable service to Wikitreers.

Comments

A further note ... the catalog is a pdf with hot links to the specific digitized films. My virus software has never found a problem with these, that certainly does not mean there can’t be any, of course.

Answer 5

One solution is to use archive.org for the storage of these files. I'm not familiar with the source you mention, but if you can download it, you can upload it to archive.org. (I don't know if they accept .jpeg files, but .jpeg files can be easily converted to PDF with Adobe Acrobat.)

The nice thing about https://archive.org/, is that you can link to an individual page within the document/book, from any WikiTree profile. I've done this with a book of several hundred .jpeg pages. It takes some time, but was surprisingly easy.

Comments

Thank you, Rick, for the Archive.org suggestion.  I have a number of documents that I would like to share.  There is a help page for uploads: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360001820212-How-to-upload-scanned-images-to-make-a-book