No geek
is an island

Very sad today to hear of the death of Verity Lambert at the age of 71. Verity was the very first producer of Doctor Who when it first aired exactly 44 years ago today.

She was the first female BBC producer and the youngest - a year younger than I am now - when she took charge of steering such a ground-breaking drama serial through its first years. Many of the elements that featured in that first episode are present in the series today, so it’s no understatement to say that without her we probably wouldn’t have the hugely successful show we still have today.

Alex has written a lovely blog post already, and Russell The Davies’s tribute is worth repeating:

“There are a hundred people in Cardiff working on Doctor Who and millions of viewers, in particular many children, who love the programme that Verity helped create.

“This is her legacy and we will never forget that.”

As it’s Doctor Who’s birthday, I was due to head to the pub anyway to celebrate with The Fans. Tonight, we’ll be toasting Verity.

One of things the Liberal Democrats are trying out as part of the current leadership election is a video hustings on YouTube. Anyone can submit a video of themselves asking a question and five of these will be put to the two candidate, Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne, who will respond via video.

You shouldn’t need anything more advanced than a camera phone that can handle video to record yourself asking a question. Here’s the introduction to the hustings from the party’s Chief Executive (and Acting Returning Officer) in what turned out to be one of the most watched videos on the UK YouTube site in the last week.

To submit a question, visit the video response page on YouTube.

Thank you to Lord Bonkers for drawing my name from his hat and thereby selecting me as one of the winners of a copy of the Taking Liberties DVD. And thank you to Jonathan Calder for running the competition.

I didn’t get to see the film at the cinema, so I’m looking forward to it!

An email from Vince Cable has popped into my inbox to tell me that former Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick has been selected by party members in London to be the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor.

Congratulations to Brian on his selection.

You can sign up for news from his campaign at www.brianpaddick.org.

Update: Here’s the BBC story and the announcement on the party website.

In days gone by, the printed indexes of births, marriages and deaths (BMD) were housed at Somerset House. Then they resided at the Family Records Centre in Islington, an excellent resource in its own right. Sadly, the FRC is closing down. The upstairs National Archives resources (censuses etc.) are moving to Kew from early next year. The paper BMD indexes - owned by the General Register Office - have moved to Christchurch as detailed on the GRO site.

Microfiche versions of the BMD indexes have for a long time been available in local libraries and record offices, but the FRC was a key central resource. As I understand it, the Office for National Statistics had committed to placing the indexes online in a fully searchable form by spring 2008, but this project has been delayed and won’t be able to take over from the FRC search room.

On the up side, other online resources continue to offer some access to the BMD indexes. The FreeBMD project, for which I used to be volunteer transcriber, has manually copied millions of entries from the indexes into a searchable database. It’s an invaluable resource and a testament to the benefits of collaborative working online. FreeBMD continues to grow, and is nearly complete now for the Victorian era.

A number of commercial websites provide access to scanned versions of the indexes as part of their subscriptions. These aren’t directly searchable, but you can browse for the page you need just as you would with a paper index. Both FindMyPast.com and Ancestry.co.uk offer this service. Helpfully, Ancestry (which is the one I have experience of using) also provides access to the FreeBMD data, and to the electronic BMD database that replaced the paper version in 1984.

While it’s a familiar refrain - and good avice - from family history guides that you shouldn’t rely solely on the internet for research, the increased availability online of scanned or indexed copies of physical sources is extremely welcome, and BMD indexes are a prime example. It’s a shame that the ONS’s promise of a fully searchable online index to replace the paper versions has, in the short term, fallen through, leaving family history researchers worse off than before.

…but Huw Edwards just noted that “As you know, there are many state coaches.”

“Today the Queen will be travelling in state coach Guinevere and will be wearing crown number 3, both of which were chosen at random earlier today by Mrs Ella Jones of Chiswick.”

In the future, the new legislative session will be launched by Billie Piper pressing a big red button. That’s progress for you.