Project for Online Access

a) The main aim of this project is to make the recordings themselves, and the supporting documentation, available online to researchers. To this end, the Archive is seeking an institution willing to host the online version of its holdings, and provide financial support towards material and personnel costs for the conservation and digitisation project. The full project will require  at least 3 years.

b) As a  preliminary step, the Archive has applied for, and been granted, initial funding for a smaller scale pilot project, of the duration of  approximately eighteen months to complete the catalogue and to get online a selection of some of the most important talks, interviews, discussions and other events recorded over the last 36 years.

This will comprise a selection of approximately 300- 350 recordings – video and audio – from each of the subject areas of Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (including Foundations and Philosophy of Maths and Physics) – hence a selection of around 1000 recordings in all. It is hoped that the clear scientific importance and interest of this selected material, together with the full catalogue of the Archive, will help to secure funding for the overall project of allowing online access to the entire archive.

The Archive acknowledges Grants received from the British Society for The History of Science from their Special Projects Fund, and from the British Society for The Philosophy of Science towards this pilot project and records its sincere thanks and appreeciation to both these bodies for their support.

 Full information about the required Budget for the Project of getting the whole Archive online and about the role of C.E.D.A.R. for ProTools Software in the restoration of  some  of the older Audio tape Recordings and other information about required hardware aand personnel costs are in the complete version of the Funding Proposal for the Archive, and can be supplied on request.

Charitable Trust

As noted above, the Archive  was formed into a Charitable Trust for Educational and Scientific Purposes under (English) Trust Law on 9th May 2008.

Assignment of copyright and Downloading

Legal ownership of the recordings will be vested in the Trust. There has never been any commercial motive in making these recordings. The intention has always been solely to ensure the preservation of the very valuable material recorded for the benefit of future research.

The Trustees and the Director of the Archive would be willing to discuss the apportionment of their rights in the recordings with any institution funding the Project of digitalising the main body of the Archive so as to permit it to be placed online, subject to the reservation that it remain an open access Archive, freely available to all who wish to consult it.

Open access, however, does not imply freedom to download at will. If it is judged desirable by the funding body, the website can be equipped with the technology to regulate downloads, as is common with the sites of other online archives.