Are you familiar with the Library Bill of Rights?
I am in charge of the local family history center. I have been working with some local libraries to help them become an affiliate. One of them said they would not participate because it violated the Library Bill of Rights. I have looked at that document and the issue is that FamilySearch seeks to have them sign up to even use the database records. Have any of you any experience in this regard?
Answers
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@Alan Rabe I just read the "Library Bill of Rights." It's short, to the point, and seems quite clear. By that local library's logic, our 4-county library system is also violating the Library Bill of Rights by requiring people to have a library card (which requires "signing up") in order to electronically check out some of their collection, which includes current periodicals. In fact, every library violates the "Library Bill of Rights" by requiring people to "sign up" in order to get a library card, which then allows them to remove books from the library, use library computers, etc. By that local library's logic, libraries should just trust everyone to take books out of the library any time they wish, and return them in the specified library time frame. They have to have a way of knowing who's accessing the collection outside of the library itself. And in our local library, they wisely require an access card - tied to your library card for which you signed up - in order to use the computers that are scattered all over the buildings. Without knowing who's using the computers, they would be entirely unable to track who might come in and install malicious softare, damage or destroy data in the computers, etc. But by protecting themselves (by your local library's logic), they've violated the Library Bill of Rights. Absurd!
If they argue that anyone can come into the library and read any book on the shelf, we can respond with the fact that anyone is equally welcome to go to the Family History Library to look at any of the books and microfilm records without "signing up." All one has to do is read the simple but important agreements we each agreed to when we signed up to use FamilySearch - all those requirements are there because the Church (like all corporations) learned by sad experience that they have to have a way of shutting down the "bad actors" as quickly as possible. If there's no sign up, there is total anonymity for all users. And few if any of us would use ANY such database in which we entered personal information about ourselves and our family members if there were no rules and no control on access for security reasons.
The Church has had to deny future access to FamilySearch to those that have maliciously gone in and created ordinance cards for Holocaust victims, for example - against Church policy and of course against the wishes of the Jewish community who found it highly offensive in some cases. The only way they could determine who was changing records maliciously, or creating ordinance cards for restricted persons (such as Holocaust victims), was through the sign up system that identified who actually did those actions. Additionally, as we all know (sometimes painfully), there are a few that refuse to acknowledge carefully documented and sourced additions to Family Tree, and keep changing data in the database to suit their own personal (but erroneous) beliefs about who's related to who, etc. Eventually, not only can someone get FamilySearch to "lock down" a line with proper documentation, but action can be taken against the "bad actors" only because the Church knows how to track the "who done it" by virtue of sign ups.
I wonder - does the library also refuse to get the library edition of Ancestry, or other commercial services that require "sign up" in order to access them? None of the Ancestry data is available (other than brief "teasers" to hopefully result in paid subscriptions) without "sign up." If they argue that those are commercial for-profit ventures and therefore they're legitimately requiring "subscriptions" (which is just "sign up") to protect their commercial interests, the same argument can easily be made for the Church's database. The Church developed FamilySearch at a cost that we can't even imagine, in addition to the untold labor of thousands of volunteers over the years. Yet they've chosen to make it freely available to anyone, in accordance with the Library Bill of Rights (without regard to race, religion, gender, etc., etc., etc.), and merely have an absolute need to protect the integrity of the database. That also becomes a protection to and for all of those that contribute to it (including privacy issues). No other purpose is involved. Missionaries aren't sent to non-member "sign ups'" homes, Church promotional literature isn't sent to them, etc. I suspect someone there is simply looking for an excuse to exclude FamilySearch because of who developed and made it available - otherwise, someone is exceptionally odd in their interpretation of their own "Library Bill of Rights." Just my 2¢.
-- Chris
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