Thanks to Jan Alpert of the Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC) for sharing this piece written by Jan Meisels Allen and sent out as an International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) Records Access Alert last night.
[Editor’s Note: We have edited this piece for length and ... indicates where material from the original post has been removed.]
This past Thursday, September 3, 2015, a legal petition was filed at the Supreme Court of the State of New York , County of New York New York City New York State
What the Request For Records Is About
Brooke Schreier Ganz is a genealogist and computer programmer living in California , but with New York NYC City
These 1908-1929 marriage licenses and affidavits are usually three pages long and have a wealth of genealogical value, with information not contained on the more commonly requested marriage certificate. The uniquely valuable information contained on these records includes: witnesses’ addresses, usually a more specific town of birth or region of birth (rather than just a country name) for the bride and groom, the bride’s occupation and occasionally the employer's name and address for both bride and groom; and perhaps most importantly has three different sets of handwriting to help those of us who had records that were semi-illegible or has “creative spelling”.
This is not the same data set as the better-known 1800’s-1937 New York City Health Department marriage certificates and their associated “Brides Index” and “Grooms Index” which is already in the public domain.
History
Brooke made a FOIL request for access to these indices in early January 2015. After some back-and-forth e-mails with the Archives' FOIL officer, hers was initially approved by the Archives on official letterhead. A few weeks later, she emailed the Archives to ask for an invoice to get the ball rolling on the microfilm copying. That was when the Municipal Archives changed their minds and denied her request, saying the records are not subject under FOIL. At no time did the Archives ever cite any legal reasoning for denying access to the indices under FOIL. They are not a privacy concern both because of their age and because of 1993 case law in New York State
Brooke then brought her plight to the New York State Commission on Open Government (COOG) and spoke with Robert Freeman, COOG’s executive director. COOG is a FOIL watchdog organization, and is funded by New York
COOG then issued an “Advisory Opinion” a letter concerning the facts of the request, which you can read here: https://tinyurl.com/RTR-COOG.
Brooke realized to continue to pursue this she would need legal counsel and file an Article 78 Petition...
What Will Happen With the Data If Brooke Wins the Petition
Brooke wants to make this material available to the public at no cost online through the Internet Archive (archive.org) and other genealogical organizations who might want it. The microfilm copies will eventually be donated to the New York
She also plans to do further FOIL requests for data access with other city and state archives. Her next one will likely be with the NYC Clerk’s Office for the post-1937-to-present NYC marriage index, which has never been available to the public before in any form. To manage this Petition and future requests, she recently founded the not-for-profit advocacy group ReclaimtheRecords.org.
ReclaimTheRecords.org
To see what is planned for other data requests go to the “to do list” at http://www.reclaimtherecords.org/to-do/
More content, including a blog with updates, will be added to the website in the near future.
[Editor’s Note: There is also a Facebook (FB) page if you prefer to follow the organization that way]
What You Can Do In Your Locale to Open Records
Others are encouraged to use their state Freedom of Information laws to open records to the public that are of genealogical value. Different jurisdictions’ FOI 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: [email protected]
Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee
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