Talk:England Gazetteers

I know that many people are using the 'The Vision of Britain' as a source for a parish histories. County gazetteers are a much better source than the brief comments about parishes on 'The Vision of Britain'. For small parishes I think it is a waste of time to link directly there. The 'The Vision of Britain' is far from a comprehensive resource for many places. Google books has put many Gazetteers online as free and searchable. I don't understand why nobody is using these as a source. There far superior to the brief comments found in the national gazetteers. These gazetteers that are on Google books are out of copy write. Even if they were in copywrite that is no reason to link to them. The reason I made the descriptions so long was to create interest. There is nothing like as short boring description of a place. Suffolk has online directories and gazetteers for 1844, 1855, 1865, 1874, 1896. One will find populations numbers, estate owners, manors, principal resident and there occupations, information about churches, market towns, regional descriptions, etc.. Google has made them every name searchable so one can within seconds search the entire book and find anything you may be looking for. It is a library. I could link directly to one gazetteer but since there are 5 of them I link to the Suffolk Gazetteers page that I created and put clear directions on how to use them and incorporate them into the parish histories. I'm hoping that someone will build on what I have started. Everything you have done to those pages I am working on I will undo unless it is an improvement. There is already a link to 'The Vision of Britain' on every page. I created those pages to be built on rather than to be torn down. It would be a much better use of your time to link to the many county gazetteers. Norfolk has many gazetteers but I see no one has even made one reference to them. If there are county gazetteers every parish page should link to them. I'm wondering when someone is going create a page with links to all the county gazetteers on Google books and other places. I'll put this comment on the England Gazetteer discussion page as well. Donjgen 18:30, 1 July 2012 (UTC)