RECLAIM THE RECORDS
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Mission Statement
WE WANT OUR RECORDS BACK. And we get them! More than twenty million records reclaimed to date. We’re Reclaim The Records, a new not-for-profit activist group of genealogists, historians, researchers, and open government advocates. We identify important genealogical records sets that ought to be in the public domain but which are being wrongly restricted by government archives, libraries, and agencies. We file Freedom of Information and Open Data requests to get that public data released back to the public. And if the government doesn’t comply, we take them to court. Then we digitize everything we win and put it all online for free, without any paywalls or usage restrictions, so that it can never be locked up again.
About This Cause
We’re Reclaim The Records, a new not-for-profit activist group of genealogists, historians, researchers, and open government advocates. We identify important genealogical records sets that ought to be in the public domain but which are being wrongly restricted by government archives, libraries, and agencies. We file Freedom of Information and Open Data requests to get that public data released back to the public. And if the government doesn’t comply, we take them to court. Then we digitize everything we win and put it all online for free, without any paywalls or usage restrictions, so that it can never be locked up again. Since our founding in 2015, we’ve already won the release of tens of millions of records. We upload all the records we acquire to the Internet Archive, as well as other Open Data websites. When government agencies fail to respond to our requests in a timely manner or are unwilling to comply with the law, we take them to court. We’ve won settlements in three groundbreaking lawsuits in the Supreme Court of New York, winning the release of decades of the New York City marriage license index and database, and we even won the payment of our attorneys fees from the city in the second case. We have more requests and potential lawsuits pending for other records from other states. The bottom line is this: we want public records to be returned to the public. The law is on our side, and we’re not afraid to use it. We started our work in New York City in 2015, expanded to three new vital records jurisdictions in 2016, and became a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2017. Your support will help us continue the fight for open records nationwide.