In the 1970s Jim Etheridge would sit in the front row at Chelmsford Folk Club every week with his reel-to-reel tape recorder. His archive is now held by Essex County Record Office, along with other recordings by Dennis Rookard. However they don't have the resources to digitise them, and I don't know whether the public has any access to them.

I imagine a lot of people will have similar recordings which might well be of historical interest and should be preserved, but how to do this? The EFDSS seems to have little interest in folk clubs or in amateur performances and I suspect they would not be interested.

Digitising them yourself and putting them online is one solution, but raises issues, as this discussion has illustrated. On the one hand these performances will probably be of interest to someone, on the other hand the rights of the performers themselves should be respected. They have the legal, and in my opinion, the moral right to object.