[Opengenalliance] Opengenalliance Digest, Vol 32, Issue 1

[Asparagirl]

Hi!  I'm Brooke Schreier Ganz, the founder of Reclaim The Records, and
I'm happily surprised to see this notice for my upcoming lecture show
up on the Opengenalliance list.

You're welcome to check out our website...
https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/

...our Facebook page...
https://www.facebook.com/ReclaimTheRecords

...and our sometimes-snarky Twitter feed...
https://twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs

...to learn more about the kind of work we do, using Freedom of
Information laws to force the release of "unavailable" genealogical
records back to the public.  We've won settlements in two different
lawsuits in New York in 2015 and earlier this year (and won attorneys
fees the second time), and we just filed a new one in Missouri, under
their state's Sunshine Law.

We've also successfully worked directly with archives to get other
records released without legal action.  We publish every record
(whether image or database) that we win online for free, without
copyrights or usage restrictions or logins.

Total number of records we've reclaimed in the past two years: more
than five million, exact count still unknown.

I'm happy to answer questions, if anyone has any?  Otherwise, I hope
I'll see you guys at my talk in New York on the 15th!


- Brooke Schreier Ganz
Mill Valley, California


On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 4:00 AM,
<opengenalliance-request at lists.openrightsgroup.org> wrote:
> Send Opengenalliance mailing list submissions to
>         opengenalliance at lists.openrightsgroup.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>         https://lists.openrightsgroup.org/listinfo/opengenalliance
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>         opengenalliance-request at lists.openrightsgroup.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>         opengenalliance-owner at lists.openrightsgroup.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Opengenalliance digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Fwd: upcoming genealogy records access lecture at the Center
>       for Jewish History (Javier Ruiz)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 12:42:07 +0000
> From: Javier Ruiz <javier at openrightsgroup.org>
> To: opengenalliance at lists.openrightsgroup.org
> Subject: [Opengenalliance] Fwd: upcoming genealogy records access
>         lecture at the Center for Jewish History
> Message-ID: <B04F1B38-F535-40D6-8DCF-D971D23A00B0 at openrightsgroup.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> HI
>
> long time no traffic
>
> please see request below
>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> From: Moriah Amit <mamit at cjh.org>
>> Subject: upcoming genealogy records access lecture at the Center for Jewish History
>> Date: 1 December 2016 at 16:41:35 GMT
>> To: "javier at openrightsgroup.org" <javier at openrightsgroup.org>
>>
>> Dear Mr. Ruiz Diaz,
>> On December 15, Brooke Schreier Ganz, founder of Reclaim The Records, will be giving a lecture at the Center for Jewish History on how to use FOIA laws to make unlawfully restricted genealogical records freely accessible to the public. Would you be amenable to sending the below announcement of this lecture to the Open Genealogy Alliance’s e-mail list and/or posting it on the Alliance’s social media channels?
>> Thank you very much,
>> Moriah Amit, M.S.L.I.S.
>> Senior Reference Services Librarian, Genealogy Coordinator
>> Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute
>> Center for Jewish History
>>
>>
>> Reclaim the Records: Using Freedom of Information Laws for Genealogical and Archival Research
>> Family History Today lecture at the Center for Jewish History
>> 15 West 16th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenues), New York, NY 10011
>> Thursday, December 15, 6:30 PM
>>
>> Brooke Schreier Ganz, founder of Reclaim The Records, states: “Tired of being told by archives, libraries, and government agencies that the records they hold are ‘unavailable’ to the public, only available behind a paywall, or only available to view if you can visit them onsite? We were too, so we figured out how to do something about it. Reclaim The Records, a new not-for-profit activist group, uses state Freedom of Information (FOI) laws to obtain copies of previously-inaccessible archival record sets, which we then freely post online, without any copyrights or usage restrictions. Our work has enabled the first-ever public access to millions of archival records from New York and New Jersey, from marriage records to registered voter lists to tax rolls. We started with a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in the Supreme Court of New York in 2015 -- and won! -- and are now spreading our legal work to other cities and states. This presentation will walk through the history and legal basics of FOI laws, and will teach researchers how to file their own state FOI requests for any genealogical or archival records they may want to see returned to the public domain.”
>>
>> To reserve your tickets, please visit http://programs.cjh.org/event/reclaim-the-records <http://programs.cjh.org/event/reclaim-the-records>.
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: <http://lists.openrightsgroup.org/pipermail/opengenalliance/attachments/20161202/dc171a2c/attachment-0001.html>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
> _______________________________________________
> Opengenalliance mailing list
> Opengenalliance at lists.openrightsgroup.org
> https://lists.openrightsgroup.org/listinfo/opengenalliance
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of Opengenalliance Digest, Vol 32, Issue 1
> **********************************************