Presenter: Brooke Ganz
Format: Download MP4 video file of Slides with synchronized audio

Tired of being told by archives, libraries, and government agencies that the genealogical records you want are "unavailable"? We were too, so we figured out how to do something about it. We're Reclaim The Records, a new not-for-profit activist group of more than 5,700 genealogists, researchers, historians, and journalists. We use Freedom of Information (FOI) laws ? and sometimes even lawsuits ? to obtain copies of previously inaccessible archival record sets, which we then put online for free public use. We've won the first-ever public and online access to more than twenty-eight million archival records, including the New York City marriage license index (1908-2017), the New York State death index (1880-1956), the New Jersey marriage index (1901-2016), an ongoing lawsuit for the Missouri birth and death index (1910-present), and more. This presentation will teach researchers how to file FOI requests for records that may help their own family tree research.