Group looks to open access to genealogy records | NJ.com
lterrat's bookmarks 2017-05-06
Summary:
"Reclaim the Records was founded by genealogist Brooke Schreier Ganz, a New York transplant living in California who was having trouble accessing some of the New York City Municipal Archives' indexes for a little-known marriage record group - the Index to New York City Marriage Applications, Affidavits, and Licenses, 1908-1929. This index is the gateway to marriage records that contain far more than what's on the standard marriage certificate and can be a boon for genealogy researchers. When RTR ran into trouble requesting the indexes through New York's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), they brought the NYC Archives to court - and won.
Those indexes - and more from New York and New Jersey (1924 voter registration list for NYC, for example), are available through RTR's page on the Internet Archive. For free. For real. And those will soon be joined by others from all over the United States.
Reclaim the Records made some headlines recently with a vital records index request in Missouri. The State Department of Health and Senior Services presented RTR with a $1.5 million estimate for the records. That was eventually revised to $5,000 and later the request was denied outright. That litigation is still pending."