Reclaim The Records is a non-profit organization and activist group that advocates for greater transparency and accessibility for

genealogical Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinsh ...

archival An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

, and

vital record Vital records are records of life events kept under governmental authority, including birth certificates, marriage licenses (or marriage certificates), separation agreements, divorce certificates or divorce party and death certificates. In some ...

s in the United States. They use state Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits to force government agencies, archives, and libraries to provide copies of previously inaccessible records to the public. Reclaim The Records then digitizes and publishes the records online for free public use, without any copyrights or usage restrictions. Reclaim The Records is the first genealogical organization to successfully sue a government agency for the release of records back to the public. As of July 2019, the organization has acquired and freely published more than twenty five million records, most of which had never been open to the public before in any location or format, or else were only available in very outdated formats such as microfiche in limited locations but had never gone online before.

History

Reclaim The Records was founded by Brooke Schreier Ganz, a technologist and long-time amateur genealogist. While living in California, Ganz had become increasingly frustrated by the lack of online access to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

New York State New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...

archival records. Almost none of the New York records had been put online by their respective city or state government archives or agencies, nor were the records available to search or to view through any genealogy websites, whether for-profit or non-profit. A small subset of the basic vital records index data was available to the public, but only if one was physically onsite in New York records repositories, and only in outdated formats such as

microfilm Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...

and

microfiche Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...

. After unsuccessfully attempting to use New York City's

open data Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...

law, Local Law 11 of 2012, to compel the publication of the basic indices to these records, Ganz decided to use the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) to force the release of copies. She made a

FOIL request Freedom of information in the United States results from freedom of information legislation at the federal level and in the fifty states. Federal level The federal government is bound by several laws intended to promote openness in government. ...

of the

New York City Municipal Archives The New York City Municipal Archives (NYCMA) is a division of the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, located in the Surrogate's Courthouse in Manhattan. Founded in 1950, the Municipal Archives preserves and makes access ...

in January 2015, which was initially agreed to and then denied by the city. This led to an Article 78 lawsuit in the

Supreme Court of New York The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in the New York State Unified Court System. (Its Appellate Division is also the highest intermediate appellate court.) It is vested with unlimited civ ...

that August. Not wanting to sue the city with just her name on the case, Ganz created Reclaim The Records as an organization so that they could both be listed as Petitioner on the case. The city settled the case five days before they were due in court, and Ganz won the first public copies of the index to New York City marriage licenses for 1908–1929 on 48 rolls of microfilm. This was the first time that an American genealogist had ever successfully sued for the return of genealogical records to the public. The case proved that the Municipal Archives' holding were indeed subject to New York's FOIL. In January 2016, Reclaim The Records filed another FOIL request that became another Article 78 lawsuit, this time filed against the New York City Clerk's Office. They too settled with the group, providing 110 reels of microfilm and copies of a digital database they had created for in-house use. The city also paid the organization's attorneys fees. In November 2016, Reclaim The Records filed a third lawsuit under the Missouri Sunshine Law against the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services for access to the basic index to births and deaths in the state. During the course of the lawsuit, it was discovered that the Missouri DHSS had been selling this same data to researchers for years, but was unwilling to provide copies to the public. The case is still pending. Reclaim The Records was formally incorporated in December 2016 and was granted 501(c)(3)

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

status by the

IRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

in February 2017.

Notable legal cases

Awards

''*awarded to the

Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services The Department of Health and Senior Services is responsible for managing and promoting all public health programs to improve life and wellness for Missourians. They are responsible for maintaining programs to control and prevent disease; regulati ...

, due to information uncovered during Reclaim The Records' Sunshine Law requests and subsequent lawsuit against the agency''

References

External links

*{{official website, https://www.ReclaimTheRecords.org/ Public records Vital statistics (government records) American genealogy Freedom of information in the United States Freedom of Information Act (United States) Freedom of information activists Non-profit organizations based in the United States Non-profit organizations based in California 501(c)(3) organizations

History

Notable legal cases

Awards

See also

References

External links