Reclaim the Records Won! Brooke Won! The Public won! Records Access won!
In Early September I posted on Avotaynu Online about how one genealogist can make a difference-(see http://adam.learnpress.esy.es/2015/09/public-records-access-one-genealogist-can-make-a-difference/) when Brooke Schreier Ganz and Reclaim the Records filed a legal petition at the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York: Brooke Schreier Ganz and ReclaimTheRecords.org [Petitioner] vs. New York City Department of Records and Information Services (DoRIS) [Respondent]. I am delighted to tell you that Brooke and Reclaim the Records won! This is access to over 600,000 never-before-public genealogical records! It is believed this is the first time a genealogist has tried to use freedom of information laws (FOIL) to force public vital records back into the public domain. Hopefully, there will be more successful pursuits of opening public records to the public!
The Petition
The request was for an historical record set—1908-1929 indices to marriage licenses and affidavits, a series originally kept by the NYC City Clerk’s office, now stored at the NYC Municipal Archives. The index is only available at the Archives located in lower Manhattan—not accessible to those who did not visit the Municipal Archives. While the Archives first accepted, they then rejected the FOIL request and then denied their appeal. The only recourse for Brooke and Reclaim the Records was to take them to court.
While DoRIS was to respond to the case in Court on September 25, DoRIS instead went to legal counsel for Brooke and Reclaim the Records and settled. To read more about this see http://t.co/5CgC2ZSehF Original url: http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67dab2&id=6a1be2dc76
The 48 microfilms are expected in California soon.
Brooke and Reclaim the Records are now pursuing New York City for the recovery of their attorneys’ fees, which is allowed under the New York State’s FOIL in cases where a state government agency had no legal basis to deny a legitimate records request. We should hear the results of that pursuit sometime in the next two months or so.
You are encouraged to sign up on the website to be kept updated: http://reclaimtherecords.org./
To see what is planned for other data requests go to the “to do list” at http://www.reclaimtherecords.org/to-do/
What You Can Do
You too can do this! Check out your state’s/country’s Freedom of Information Laws and see if the records that are not available on the Internet are eligible to be accessed under those laws and then petition under the law to get them accessible to the public! Different jurisdictions’ Freedom of Information laws can help us access otherwise unavailable records which can then be placed on the internet. At least for the NYC records they are not digitized so microfilms have to be copied.
If you have any questions, please contact Brooke, she would love to talk with you. Her email for questions about this case and future FOIL cases is reclaimtherecords@gmail.com
Congratulations to Brooke and Reclaim the Records!
Where will these records be available?
The microfilms first have to arrive at Brooke’s -they are expected in about 2 weeks. Then they have to be digitized and indexed before they go up online. It is expected that they will be available by the end of the year on Internet Archives (Archives.com). When they are available I will post to Avotaynu Online.
Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee
Quick correction to Jan’s comment — the Internet Archive’s website address is archive.org, not archives.com. The Internet Archive is non-profit.