Hi, Johnny, yes excellent news and well done.

My experience of the EI Source Book project convinced me to that there is a voracious demand for contracts, insights, laws, policies, NGO pieces of critical analysis etc. regarding the extractive industries. During its final year of previous World Bank funding (it has continued since then just supported by the University of Dundee, and we are hoping to secure more funding to coincide with the forthcoming book launch) that project reached 6,000 unique users monthly users, most of whom visited to download documents. Obviously, OpenOil is a valued partner on that project (www.eisourcebook.org) as well. Like you, I am convinced that the empiral proof is there that this information is wanted by users, not just vaguely argued as a "good idea" by transparency campaigners. Transparency is not fundamentally a woolly concept, despite heckles to the contrary, and indeed genuine examples of wooly usage amongst practitioners from time to time.

Like OpenOil, Dundee Uni took the decision - which I fully support - of not requiring users to register in order to get the downloads, as anonymity is so important as a simple "hygiene factor" in so much of the world when it comes to the extractive industries, sadly. Basically this means where folk cannot afford to take the risk of being public about their interest in these industries for fear of reprisals of some sort, reprisals not necessarily meaning of the judicial variety but perhaps more subtle, such as increased difficulty in getting a job. This approach of safeguarding anonymity was questioned by many who thought that we were missing a vital trick by not collating valuable information about users, but I stick true to my view that it was and is right and necessary.

Johnny - perhaps it would be useful to be more explicit about whether the repository is for the extractive industries as a whole, that is both petroleum and mining, or is really about petroleum (or mining)? I know that you have detailed this point in other postings, including on GOXI, but it is rather implicit above (or requires a click on one of the above links). So please can I prompt you to restate the position here. Thank you.