In an earlier message I wrote: >Sadly the prevalence of theft has meant that all those who keep archived > data about dials - like the BSS here in the UK - must be very vigilant > about inadvertent publication about dials of any sort since even the > humblest horizontal dial is often worth quite a bit for its brass/ bronze > content alone. It is for this reason that the BSS does not publicise > information about dials on the Internet. > and Fernando quite reasonably said:
>This opinion (and decision) tantalizes me and mystifies me. Sundials are there to be admired.< Fernando: I don't want any confusion to develop here. I don't think we are too far apart in our thinking! I didn't say that we should somehow hide the dials from the public or that we should somehow make it difficult for really interested persons to learn about and go and see dials that interest them. I said we should be vigilant. We should just not make it easy for others who do not have that interest to steal them. In the BSS we keep a register of all known dials in the UK and Eire and we make this available in a variety of ways to our Members. We publish a printed edition of the Register from time to time (new one due out later this year) and Members can contact the Registrar (currently me) for summaries on dials of certain types, dials in specified counties, dials whose condition hasn't been recorded for 10 years or more, mottoes used by makers, etc etc. Members can also ask me to seek permission from owners so that they may view a dial whose dial-address has been deliberately excluded from the printed Register for security reasons. In this way we seek to provide the means by which those most interested in sundials can come together in the BSS and make use of the information that we have. What the Council of the Society has decided not to do is to place the whole Register on the Internet. The British Sundial Society is a registered UK Charity. Amongst other benefits this is a mechanism in the UK by which the members of the Council of the Society obtain the same sort of protection that a Limited Company (or Incorporation) gives to the directors of a private or public Company and thus the Council members have limited personal financial liability. [Without that we'd never get anyone to serve on the Council !!]. It is also good because it is a way of preventing organisations like us that should serve the public from having to become private companies in order to get such protection. However, as you might expect, in return for this there are quite stringent rules and a commonality about the way in which UK Charities conduct their affairs and the (?excessive?) caution over being seen to 'encourage' theft reflects this and the actual levels of theft that we see, if anything, reinforces these views. No-one is more aware than I of the need to serve our Members needs and we shall adopt new approaches as they become accepted by the Charity Commissioners and by others in the Heritage movement - like the Royal Commissions on the Historical Monuments of England and Scotland. As you might expect though this might be slower than some would like :-) On the matter of publicising the pictures on the Internet without the addresses I would say that this might work but it is a fact that very often the first questions one asks about an interesting dial are 'Where is that one?' or 'Why was it designed that way?' or 'Who was the designer?. The location and history behind a dial is very often important to its appreciation. Because of that here in the UK it's often not all that hard to guess just from such background information where a particular dial might be located. Apart from the plethora of dials dating from the 18th Century, the UK is fortunate in having quite a few beautiful 'scientific' fixed dials that date back to the 16th and 17th Centuries - not to mention the odd one from Saxon times (10th Century) - and we probably cannot rely on initial anonymity as a safeguard for those. I hope this helps to put the position in perspective. I shall be most interested to hear what others think. Patrick
