Please deliver access to all digital images of a film, which needn't to be restricted !

LegacyUser

Matthias Schulz said: There are a lot of microfilms containing some images, which fall under data protection, because they are to new. On the other hand many other very useful images on the same microfilm are much older needing no protection. Instead of restricting the whole film, it would be very helpful, to lock only theese digital images, that need protection and make visible all the others, so that lots of researches more could be done.

If this is too much work for now, a first step could be at least to make visible all images of items with no images in the protected range.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Going back to the old method of adding records to microfilm, I could never work out why in some cases there film had been cut to the length of one item, but in other cases the whole length on the film was used - regardless of whether there was any connection between the various items.

Completely off-topic, but don't get me going on why ever 16mm format was ever chosen for some microfilming!

Currently, there are complaints about the extremely small size of many of the new, digitised collections. Some show "1of 4 " images, instead of say the "1 of 2567" that is commonly the case with the older "ex-microfilm" ones. Maybe this is being done deliberately to avoid the problem to which you refer.

If time had been no object, I believe your idea might have been implemented at the start of the digitisation program. However, FamilySearch seem to have set a deadline for completion of digitisation of all its older material, so it seems to have been easier to leave these collections grouped as they were on the original films.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Access to records is controlled by the owners of the original records.

If the records are public, there is no restriction based upon the age of the persons involved. They are either available or they aren't.

In some instances, there are those public officials who do not understand the state freedom of information act. See https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/to-do/ for a list of to do items the Reclaim the records group is attempting to get released.

There may be some cases where some information is private in nature. Those are rare and I recently looked through the digital images where some of the images were marked "photo" and the rest were viewable. If that wasn't a glitch (I do not believe it was), then what you've ask for is already in place.

But it will take time to go through each set of images to determine what can and cannot be displayed if the custodians of the original records have set up rules for public display.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Agreed, Tom, but to minimise the effects of the current position of the whole microfilm content being restricted for the sake of one item, surely it would be (would have been) best practice to divide the digitised films into, say, single items - rather than still having "Items 1-36" still grouped together.

When I examine the same image from a collection it often shows a totally different "1 of..." than if accessed from the Catalog, other times exactly the same, so I'm sure this could be managed.

The current practice of separating items (see below) goes to the other extreme!

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: There are many films with multiple "Items". FS can only apply restrictions to the whole film.

That means a film with records from 1700-2000 has to be completely unavailable due to records from 2000 being too recent.

Or if records from a record owner (e.g. a church) who doesn't want their records to be digitized and published online is on the same film as records from another owner who is a government agency and legally obliged to make the records freely available, then the entire film cannot go online.

However recently I saw a live video/"webinar" from FS in which they demonstrated their long awaited feature to divide films so that different restrictions can be applied to different images. If what Tom reports was not a glitch, then this is already being implemented (despite no announcement). It would be helpful if a FS Staff member could respond and say whether this feature has been released yet or not.

As for the issue of owners placing restrictions on records, as Tom said Reclaim the Records is active trying to make government-held vital records more available. They have not lost a lawsuit yet. If your local County Clerk restricts access to records then you could participate in local politics, elections and primaries. If you have contacts in a private record owner such as a church or newspaper company, you could encourage them to let FS digitize their records.

LegacyUser

Matthias Schulz said: I know, that Ancestry uses some of our digitized microfilmes and they make visible or restrict images singularily. I have seen them with my own eyes. This is only a question of reviewing the film and developping the software. Yes, I am aware, that this is a lot of work, but it's also a great improvement.

If you make visible or restrict items, you can save the time to look into the images for knowing, which have to be restricted, because the information is already in the cataogue. The new feature "Search Images" already splits films, so that you are only able to see the requested part of a film, so you can use this part of the software and it should be no large expenditure of time. You have already developed this important feature.

To restrict only parts of an item you have to build a database, which contains all films and the image numbers, which are restricted, and then enable the software, to read the database to know, if an image must be hidden or not. You don't have to establish an entry for each image, if you give ranges for the image numbers to be restricted.

LegacyUser

Patricia Mollemans said: We are talking film/folder level rights management vs. images level rights management. It would be nice to have image level rights management. It would free up a lot of records that are now restricted due to data privacy of a portion of the records.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: There are legal contracts that impact this. To gain image access rights, Each and every contract would have to be renegotiated for those access rights and right now, FS is still working on contracts that were created when the records were originally filmed long before digitizing was under consideration.

LegacyUser

Matthias Schulz said: The overwhelming majority of unneccessarily restricted images isn't restricted because of contracts, but because of the legal data protection period of some images on the same film. Ancestry has already implemented the function to hide only theese images of a digitized microfilm, while showing the other images. If Ancestry can do this, we also can.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: FamilySearch is still being developed and the organization has limited resources. When a feature, like this one, is proposed, it is considered and then if the feature is to be implemented, it is placed on a priority list.

Keep in mind that the request for a means to correct published indexes existed for ten years (and repeatedly requested) before it was partially implemented. There are sections of that feature that are still to be developed. We were informed that other system requirements kept pushing that request down in priority.

Legal data protections as enacted by the jurisdiction does impact the government records from that jurisdiction. However, many records are not government in nature and as such, access is covered by a legal contract by FamilySearch and the custodians of those records.

If you are addressing only government records, then the laws of the local jurisdiction do impact the release of the images to the general public. However, those are date related and as such, the system has no sliding means by which records that pass a certain point can be released. It may be several months or even a year or more before a given collection is updated.

LegacyUser

Paul said: I'd still be interested in learning about how FamilySearch / GSU came to put such diverse collections on one microfilm in the first place. Makes no sense when with some films I used to view I'd find myself at the "end of roll" after a few turns of the reader handle. Did it take a long time before someone realised you only needed a pair of scissors to cut the film to the required length, in order to separate unconnected items? Would have saved many of the problems we have today over microfilms with partly-restricted material - as well as making searching the film (for the item required) so much easier.

LegacyUser

Matthias Schulz said: Dear Tom, let me give an example to show you for which kind of records, my request is very useful and easily implementable:

The whole Film of Wahlwies in Baden Germany film no. 939032 = DGS 8268341 is restricted, because of a few confirmations (Fimungen) between 1910 and 1964. All the other images of that film would be visible in Family History Centers according the contract between familysearch and the archbishop's archive in Freiburg like film no. 939033 = DGS 8277196 from the same village and all images from the other surrounding villages, which are also in possession of the archbishop's archive in Freiburg (Erzbischöflichen Archiv Freiburg).

The reason, why theese comfirmations must be restricted doesn't have anything to do with the archbishop's archive and a contract with them. They are only restricted, because in Germany, there is a restriction of 110 years on births and baptisms.
Today the result for researchers is, that you can't make any researches on christenings in Wahlwies and no research before 1808 on marriages and deaths, only because of a few confirmation records, which are to recent.

This is only one example of thousands, and it shows, that it has nothing to do with existing contracts and any attempt to newly negotiate them, but nevertheless it would have a huge impact on our genalogical research.

LegacyUser

ROF TP said: Dear Everyone,

Additionally to Mr. Schulz's point, there are restricted mikrofilms which I need for my genealogical research in the parish:

Krsty 1739-1741, 1745-1799 (str. 1-112) -- Manželstvá 1746-1799 (str. 113-136) -- Úmrtia 1746-1799 (str. 137-191)
Ort
Granite Mountain Record Vault
Sammlung/Regal
International Film
Film
2233495
Item 2
DGS
5218791

These records are not even touching the margins of data protection for births, marriages and deaths. They are normal archival documents and building on this point there are similar records from these years from neighbouring parishes which are accessible. This approach is inconsistent and therefore would it be possible to enable the access?

Thank you very much.

Yours very sincerely,

RvTP

LegacyUser

ROF TP said: Dear Everyone,

Additionally to Mr. Schulz's point, there are restricted mikrofilms which I need for my genealogical research in the parish:

Krsty 1739-1741, 1745-1799 (str. 1-112) -- Manželstvá 1746-1799 (str. 113-136) -- Úmrtia 1746-1799 (str. 137-191)
Ort
Granite Mountain Record Vault
Sammlung/Regal
International Film
Film
2233495
Item 2
DGS
5218791

These records are not even touching the margins of data protection for births, marriages and deaths. They are normal archival documents and building on this point there are similar records from these years from neighbouring parishes which are accessible. This approach is inconsistent and therefore would it be possible to enable the access?

Thank you very much.

Yours very sincerely,

RvTP

LegacyUser

ROF TP said: The above named parish is Drženice, Slovakia

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The availability of these records is a matter of a legally binding contract between the custodians of the original records and FamilySearch. Any release of restricted records is determined by contract.

Note, there are instances wherein FamilySearch has mistakenly restricted access, but those instances can be resolved by verifying with the current custodians their policies regarding public access through FamilySearch. Once those policies make it clear that the custodians have placed not access restrictions, then FamilySearch needs to become involved and review their contractual agreement with the custodians.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: That can still take a long time. Around a year ago I contacted the archives in Rotterdam, Netherlands about why the Holland America Line passenger lists are restricted to LDS only. They denied imposing these restrictions, which would be both illegal and unconstitutional under Dutch law. The records have been available by them for free on another site. FS said it could take a year to resolve, and indeed a year later the records are still LDS only. Obviously the fact that the records are on another website makes it low priority, but it would still be beneficial to have them opened up to all FS users regardless of their religion.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: What you want to see is Item 2 of film 2233495.
Item 4 of film 2233495 contains marriages from 1948, which is only 72 years ago. 75 or 80 years is the minimum period after which marriage records can be released in many countries.
Currently FamiySearch can apply restrictions to the entire film 2233495. It cannot apply different restrictions to each Item. Therefore, the entire film must be restricted. If the limit is 75 years it will on 1 January 2024 that they will be legally permitted to publish this microfilm online.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: This example is indeed just one of thousands, and the topic comes up fairly frequently on this forum. FS could liberate millions of records if they split up films into Items and unrestricted older items. It would surely be a much cheaper, quicker and easier way of expanding their collections and the accessibility of it, versus negotiating new contracts and filming new records (both of which will be difficult for some time due to the pandemic).

LegacyUser

Juli said: Slovakia's privacy law is a universal 100 years, as far as I know.

LegacyUser

ROF TP said: Dear van Helsdingen,

Thank you very much for your response, however, your argument is not quite right as for example in the parish Dolné Semerovce has records which are accessible between the years :

Manželstvá 1858-1869 -- Úmrtia 1858-1869
Granite Mountain Record Vault
International Film
2065381
Item 1
5016577

But then earlier records are not available as seen below :

Krsty 1703-1751 -- Úmrtia 1705-1751 -- Manželstvá 1706-1753
Granite Mountain Record Vault
International Film
2065380
Item 3
5016576

Again this seems for me inconsistent and therefore does somebody know the contact details (email) for those who are responsible for access and restrictions?

Thank you.

Yours very sincerely,

RvTP

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: Items 1 and 2 of film 2065380 come from another parish (see https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...)

Different parishes may have different restrictions. It depends on whether the Catholic diocese, individual parishes or a government archive own the records. If that other other parish did not give permission for their records to be accessible, then Items 3-5 of the same film also cannot be accessible. As I said before, if one part of a film cannot be published due to privacy or legal reasons, then the entire film cannot be published.

You will need to speak to the record custodians about access. You will see in the Catalog at the top of the page there are "Authors". These are the organisations who owned the records at the time FS filmed the records. FS never discusses these issues with members of the public.

However, the Catholic Church since 2009 has had a policy that their records should not be published on the FS site. This is due to religious disagreements with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This policy is however widely ignored- only in Ireland is the rule enforced (as far as I am aware). Be aware therefore that speaking to the Catholic dioceses and parishes risks them changing their mind, especially if the Bishop or Priest has changed since FS filmed the records. If that happened, these Catholic records could be completely removed from the FS website.

I did notice that some of the authors of the records you have mentioning appear to be government archives that hold records from multiple religions. But it's possible that the Catholic Church still owns the records and controls access.

LegacyUser

Juli said: As far as I know, all of the church books in Slovakia are in government archives, and they all have the same 100-year restriction. In all of the above examples, you have to pay attention to both the film number and the item number.

2233495 item 1 has marriages to 1929 and deaths to 1920, and item 4 includes marriages to 1948 and deaths to 1940.

2065381 is not restricted, because the latest anything on it goes is 1890.

2065380 item 4 includes an index of deaths to 1937 and of baptisms to 1938, and item 5 includes an index of marriages to 1940 along with confirmations up to 1935.

Note that even if they partition films by item, there will be restricted records from well outside the protected period, because of things like 2065380 item 4, which includes everything from 18th century marriages to a 20th century baptism index, and item 5, which has baptisms from 1837 and confirmations from a century later.

LegacyUser

ROF TP said: Dear Everyone,

Does somebody have the contact details to the familysearch.org headquarters?

If yes, would it be possible to write me.

Yours very sincerely,

RvTP

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: If you go to the question mark at the top of the page, then go to "Contact Us" you can write a message to FamilySearch (FS) Staff. Unless there is an obvious inconsistency or error, you will need proof in the form of a letter from the record owner (either the government archive, parish or diocese). FS needs legal permission to change restrictions, and this permission is usually a contract signed by the record owner. FS will never show the contract to you or discuss the specific details of why a particular record is restricted.

The best chance of getting FS to change the restrictions would be to contact the record owner and ask them to contact FS using this webpage: https://www.familysearch.org/records/... If the record owner does that, FS can arrange a meeting with them to discuss removing restrictions on access to records.

LegacyUser

Paul said: AvH makes a very good point over who has the "power" when it comes to publication of records on external websites, particularly on FamilySearch.

I believe my research of Church of England records for the county of Norfolk illustrates the problem. I have noticed a number of records for individual parishes being completely withdrawn during the last couple of years. The repository for all these records is the Norfolk Record Office, yet it appears the publication control rights still goes as "far down" as the individual parishes. I say this because the Norfolk C of E records that can still be viewed on FamilySearch are spread over both the dioceses in the county (Norfolk and Norwich), so the problem does no appear to be at that level.

In this instance, the way around of still making available the vast majority of material on a digitised film appears to have been found - by completely removing the restricted content. (Most parishes in Norfolk are quite small so rarely appeared on separate microfilms.) And where there is an option to select individual parish records from a page of listings, the parish names (links) have simply disappeared.

This individual case shows the problem in establishing who holds the "rights" over particular items and how varying circumstances (including different "degrees" of restriction - e.g. LDS only, FHC or affiliate only, etc.) make this matter far from straightforward.

LegacyUser

Paul said: On giving this matter further thought, I believe part of my analysis of the situation is flawed. For example, if a film had "1 of 2367" images, what would have happened if, say, images 290-323 (relating to a particular parish) were withdrawn? (Although I am aware of instances where there has been renumbering of images on a film.) But I admit in the case of many of these Norfolk records the microfilms DID relate to one parish per roll, after all.

However, I have not withdrawn my comments because,

(a) I still believe they illustrate that individual items can be withdrawn without losing sight of the rest of the associated material, and

(b) They illustrate there is probably not one easy solution to the issue, due to the varying circumstances that might apply to each example that arises.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Last time I looked the new "Search Images" doesn't work on multi-item films - it messes the order up. If all the items are for the same place, it's possibly not an issue, but it certainly messed up the item numbers on the ones that I looked at. So it hasn't been written in a useful manner I'm afraid.

Anyone wishing to contradict me with up to date data, feel free - it was such an appalling mess that I've ignored it since its first introduction.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Paul is definitely right that in some cases (and possibly all, I've no idea) the parishes still have control over what happens to "their" parish registers. (NB - this is not a matter of copyright, it's a matter of terms and conditions agreed when the registers were accessioned to the record office). Devon has several parishes where registers aren't online at all, in any system, because of what the parish decides. Cheshire has only a couple like that but I suspect that in at least one case that might be a commercial decision as the parish in question sells their own CD of register images.

LegacyUser

Matthias Schulz said: Now, if we are here in the detail with two examples, let us exactly argue due to the facts:

From my example of Wahlwies, Baden, Germany with the fims 939032 = DGS 8262341,939033 = DGS 8277196, 939034 = DGS 8277197, we learn, that only the film 939032 = DGS 8262341 is absolutely restricted, both others are visible in FamilyHistory Centers. The restriction of the owner (archbishop's archive Freiburg) is the same on all of theese films, namely, that FamilySearch is only allowed to show them in Family History Centers like all other films having this archive as owner. Therefore the total restriction of film 939032 = DGS 8262341 is not by contract, but because of the data of singular images newer than 1910.

Let us now have a look at Drženice, Levice, Slovakia. There is only one film (2233495 = DGS 5218791) of the protestant church, which also contains catholic records of the village Dražovce. So there are two different contracts on this film, but each of them is for separate items of the film and not for the whole film, because the catholic church can't forbid FamilySearch to show protestant records and the catholic church can't forbid FamilySearch to show protestant records. If we now look into the neighbourhood, we find a village called Bátovce 4 kilometers away, with protestant records visible for everybody at home (films 2212182 = DGS 5212777 and 2212183 = DGS 5212778) The possessor of the archive is the same, also is the Slovacian okresi (=district) and the protestant bishopric this village belongs to.

For the catholic village Dražovce, we can also find the films 2233493 = DGS 5218789 and 2233494 = DGS 5218790, which are visible to the public. That is evidence enough, that in the case of film 2233495 = DGS 5218791, there is also no contract, which will prevent the publishing of this film, but it's only the records, which are less than 100 years old.

For an authorized employee of FamilySearch, it would be a little expenditure to look up the contracts of theese villages and I am sure, they will find out, that there is no reason by contract, to restrict this film, but FamilySearch has only to hide images less than 100 years old or items, which contain theese images.

!!!!!
Here an additional suggestion, so that the employees don't have to see a huge mountain of work before them:
Do it as it has been done with the digitizing of films. Give the researchers the chance to make a request for up to 5 films, to change from restricting by film to restricting by items or by single images. Your employees can look up the contracts and if they prevent a release, the support has to coummunicate this, but otherwise, you can partly release images of the requested film and increase the user experience.

LegacyUser

ROF TP said: Dear everyone,

I absolutely agree with Mr Schulz, it is not a matter of contract (at least in the Slovakian case) but those films cannot be published which are from 1900 and later. In Slovakia there are numerous mikrofilms that are restricted before 1900 and do not cross over the 1900 boundary. I have contacted the Slovak archive and they said that they did not place any restrictions on those mikrofilms which are 1900 and earlier. Therefore, I wish to speak with somebody who organises accesses and restrictions of mikrofilms. I do not want to debate it in a debating forum, which does not handle inquiries directly. Could somebody please write me some contact details to a familysearch.org office?

Thank you.

Yours very sincerely,

RvTP