I did a reply from Dr Mark McCarthy at the Met Office who said that they were asking for volunteers from WeatherRescue to digitise the records for them.
I couldn't resist the urge to fire another comment asking why this work hadn't been done sooner, and why the work couldn't be speeded up by farming out the work to a data digitisation company in India.
I await his reply to that.
I agree with most of the points that you make, but not with 'digitisation of paper records is an ongoing project'.If the Met Office as custodians of our climate records had been doing their jobs right, there would no need for an ongoing project, because it would have all be done years ago.
What frustrates me is when the Met Office say that our climate records (gridded) start in 1910, when they know full well that they sit on records that could extend it back to at least 1878, and for rainfall even further.
As for who digitises the records, don't think that a company in India wouldn't charge the Met Office a lot of money to do this, and that's why it's not an option for them, because they want it done for free.
Believe me if the Met Office contracted a team of salaried people to start digitising the 1909 DWR I would be one of the first to volunteer!
Compare that to the 438 stations for the 1st of January 2017...
I just can't believe they don't have much more digitised temperature data they don't release to the public, but I could be wrong.