Records may be removed

LegacyUser

MaryAnnHarcha said: Where are the records you had before? Are some sources removed? If I attach a record, can I be assured it will always be available?

LegacyUser

Paul said: Mary Ann

It would help if you could be more specific. However, there are two general answers to your questions.

(1) Many records have been added to FamilySearch with the permission of the record custodian, or through an agreement with a major commercial website like Find My Past. If permission for FamilySearch to display these records is withdrawn - say when a new contract is drawn up - direct access will no longer be available. Sometimes they become subject to restricted access, so we might no longer be able to view them from home but can still see them at a Family History Centre. Usually, the URL will remain in an individual's Sources section in Family Tree, but you will get a message of its current availability when you click on this link. Recently, there was a bug whereby a "410 Record removed" message appeared against a number of records. There are still records displaying this - some due to the bug, but others because they are genuinely no longer available to view.

(2) Connected to the first question, really. When I first started using the site I was given assurance by a FamilySearch employee that FamilySearch indexed sources WOULD always be there. This should have been better worded, by saying the URLs would always remain but they might no longer be of any use!

Sometimes, a small number of records from a particular collection will disappear, but on other occasions the whole collection might be withdrawn. As I have said, it might be helpful if you could advise which specific record, collection or perhaps film number you are no longer able to see.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Sometimes, all it takes is a decision by one person who administers records. A couple of years ago, Illinois (which always has been horrid at managing its tax revenue) made a change that impacted access to its online records. The decision was made by the Cook County Clerk and they set up a process that would earn them more revenue -- and this was copied by other county clerks.

Originally, I could go to any court house and access the record books directly. There were even tables available for the public to use.

Then the change was made in which I could no longer look at the books, but a clerk could and they would provide only answers to questions that could be answered with a yes or no. Then, if I wanted to see the record, I had to pay $17 for a copy.

At that time, the previously-available records were no longer available through FamilySearch. Now I had to contact the county clerk's office and request a copy of a record. There was no guarantee that the copy would have what I wanted.

This evidently caused an uproar because a group called Reclaim Our Records got involved. They have successfully been able to stop public records from being withheld from public view in many states who have passed state freedom of information acts. Illinois is still targeted because they passed legislation but did not include court records in the act. However, the records that are digitized can be viewed via a Family History Center. I haven't check recently, so some may also be available now online at this time. If not, then hopefully soon. Both Will county and Cook county are now specifically targeted by Reclaim our Records. See the To-Do list for that organization at https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/to-do/

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: I would point out that Reclaim the Records (RTR) was founded due to frustrations at New York's lack of access to records, not Chicago's. So far RTR has mostly focused on New York, but they are slowly diversifying their areas of work- for example they recently had a big legal win in Missouri. For years they have listed Illinois as a target area, but only a few months ago did they announce they had hired an attorney in Illinois. Coincidentally or not, a bill was introduced a few days later in the legislature to make certain records held by the judiciary (e.g. coroner and probate records) less expensive to obtain.

As I have said before, a unique feature of the American system is that County Clerks are directly elected. I strongly encourage all genealogists in the USA to participate in both the primary and general elections for these positions.

I can strongly sympathize with Chicago genealogists, as here in New Zealand we pay NZ$25 (US$16 per record), but at least the index is free. Some of the Australian states charge considerably more. Interestingly, the genealogical community is not as opposed to this as in the United States, probably because these fees have been charged for many decades and all the Commonwealth countries that we compare ourselves to such as Australia, UK, Canada etc all charge fees as well. The law that sets out how our vital records system works explicitly allows fees to be charged, thus making legal action impossible: only political lobbying could persuade the Executive to decrease the fees.