Why am I not able to access images for Daughters of the Republic of Texas Collection?
I have been using this collection for several years and now am not able to see the images. Was wondering what is causing this problem?
Thank you for your help!
Answers
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@GiangiulioKara I assume you are referring to the collection of Membership Applications.
Many recent records include supporting documents about potentially living people, which is likely why access was restricted, though I'm unsure if contractual changes also affected older applications. It's possible that this situation may change after a future review.
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The applications in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Collection that have been accessible to view have been only year 2010 or earlier. It hasn't been problem viewing them until the last week or so when the images became restricted. I hope this does change as it has been such a helpful resource for working on applications to DRT.
Thank you for your response.
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Please elevate this question to database engineering staff in charge of access to this dataset.
I am the President General of the DRT and am writing on behalf of our 7000 members. The DRT requested one member's application records be removed at her insistence. You did that - I personally verified it - perfect. She was happy. Thank you. Other members were concerned that AI search (full text) was active on the dataset so we asked that the full text search be turned off - essentially to return to the pre-AI access that had been in place since inception of the dataset. Instead, all access was removed and now we cannot see any images in the dataset at all. I have sent several emails to data privacy and not received a response to this issue. I realize you are all busy and this is one dataset among 1000s if not 100,000s but the blockout is causing severe impact to our organization. Please restore image access to this dataset. If you cannot restore it without the AI search - then tell us (me) and go ahead and turn AI (full text) search back on. We were not expecting to be 100% locked out of our application images. Please let me know the status of this situation asap. Ora Jane Johnson, President General, Daughters of the Republic of Teas
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@ora jane johnson
Please see this thread with a response from a knowledgeable mod:0 -
MOD Note: For simplicity and to help everyone find the best answers in one place, related posts on this topic have been combined into a single discussion.
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Thank you for reaching out regarding the current access restrictions on the DRT Membership Applications collection.
I’m not certain which department you tried to contact, but if you submitted a formal request to remove the restrictions, it would require approval beyond the level of engineering staff. FamilySearch Legal would likely need to review your organization's contract agreement and also interpret FamilySearch's privacy policies as part of the process.
I will forward your message to records management in hopes of getting it to the appropriate decision makers.
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Please provide my contact information to the appropriate legal representative. As President General of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, I am our organization's official spokes person. I originally contacted your data privacy department. Since then, I called your help line and was told to post my enquiry here. I do believe we are making progress making it through the various gate keepers, but, the members of my organization are asking multiple times a day about the status so it is incumbent on me to keep the issues at the forefront.
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@ora jane johnson I submitted your request to our Rights Management team who will then reach out to Contract and Compliance. Hopefully, they will respond to you directly but if not I can update when action is taken.
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It was my understanding that DRT applications were placed in a collection to protect confidential information, as only someone who knew the member number and the image number could easily access the data. The member number would be known to the member and whomever she chose to share it with, and the image number is made available by DRT only to authorized personnel.
Family Search is such a great resource for genealogists and family researchers. Membership information from the DRT Collection is used routinely by registrars and DRT's Texas Genealogical Research Committee. Hopefully, access will be made available with the restrictions originally put in place in 2012.
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The members of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas would like an update please on the status of restoring access to our membership application collection - It is a new week and I am bringing this back to the forefront for a status update, please.
As President General of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, I am our organization's official spokes person. I originally contacted your data privacy department. Since then, I called your help line and was told to post my enquiry here. I do believe we are making progress making it through the various gate keepers, but, the members of my organization are asking multiple times a day about the status so it is incumbent on me to keep the issues at the forefront.
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@ora jane johnson Please refer to the answer given above by SerraNola: "I submitted your request to our Rights Management team who will then reach out to Contract and Compliance. Hopefully, they will respond to you directly but if not I can update when action is taken." Please have patience, these things take time and FamilySearch is doing the best they can do.
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