Reclaim The Records
Reclaim The Records is a non-profit organization and activist group that advocates for greater transparency and accessibility for genealogical, archival, and vital records in the United States. They use state Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits to force government agencies, archives, and libraries to provide copies of previously inaccessible records to the public. Reclaim The Records then digitizes and publishes the records online for free public use, without any copyrights or usage restrictions. Reclaim The Records is the first genealogical organization to successfully sue a government agency for the release of records back to the public. As of July 2019, the organization has acquired and freely published more than twenty five million records, most of which had never been open to the public before in any location or format, or else were only available in very outdated formats such as microfiche in limited locations but had never gone online before. History Reclaim The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Genealogy
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members. The results are often displayed in charts or written as narratives. The field of family history is broader than genealogy, and covers not just lineage but also family and community history and biography. The record of genealogical work may be presented as a "genealogy", a "family history", or a " family tree". In the narrow sense, a "genealogy" or a " family tree" traces the descendants of one person, whereas a "family history" traces the ancestors of one person, but the terms are often used interchangeably. A family history may include additional biographical information, family traditions, and the like. The pursuit of family history and origins tends to be shaped by several motives, including the des ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York City Department Of Records And Information Services
The New York City Department of Records and Information Services (DoRIS) is the department of the government of New York City that organizes and stores records and information from the City Hall Library and Municipal Archives. It is headquartered in the Surrogate's Courthouse in Civic Center, Manhattan. Its regulations are compiled in title 49 of the ''New York City Rules''. DORIS has several divisions, such as the New York City Municipal Archives, which "preserves over 200,000 cubic feet of original documents, photographs, ledgers, maps, architectural renderings, manuscripts, and moving images." The Municipal Archives maintains aonline galleryof over 1.6 million photographs and other materials. Notable among the Archives' collections are the 1940s Tax Department photographs, which were taken by the Works Progress Administration between 1939 and 1951. These photographs depict most real estate parcels in the five boroughs. Other divisions include the Municipal Library (not to be c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Civil Registration And Vital Statistics
CRVS Systems stands for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems and represents the interoperability of three separate systems: Civil Registration, Health Information, and Vital Statistics. The United Nations (UN) defines Civil Registration as: “The continuous, permanent, compulsory, and universal recording of the occurrence and characteristics of vital events (live births, deaths, fetal deaths, marriages, and divorces) and other civil status events pertaining to the population as provided by decree, law or regulation, in accordance with the legal requirements in each country.” The primary purpose of Civil Registration is to establish the legal documents required by law. Civil Registration establishes the individual’s right to recognition as a person before the law and is the fundamental source of legally valid identity data used across government services. Universal birth registration is enshrined in international human rights through the UConvention on the Rights ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Public Records
Public records are documents or pieces of information that are not considered confidential and generally pertain to the conduct of government. Depending on jurisdiction, examples of public records includes information pertaining to births, deaths, marriages, and documented transaction with government agencies. Attitudes and expectations about what information should be made public have been studied. History Since the earliest organised societies, with taxation, disputes, and so on, records of some sort have been needed. In ancient Babylon records were kept in cuneiform writing on clay tablets. In the Inca empire of South America, which did not have writing, records were kept via an elaborate form of knots in cords, quipu, whose meaning has been lost. In Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages public records included census records as well as records of birth, death, and marriage; an example is the 1086 ''Domesday Book'' of William the Conqueror. The details of royal marriage ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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American Freedom Of Information Activists
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label that was previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Open Data
Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements such as open-source software, open-source hardware, open content, open specifications, open education, open educational resources, open government, open knowledge, open access (publishing), open access, open science, and the open web. The growth of the open data movement is paralleled by a rise in intellectual property rights. The philosophy behind open data has been long established (for example in the Merton thesis, Mertonian tradition of science), but the term "open data" itself is recent, gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web and, especially, with the launch of open-data government initiatives Data.gov, Data.gov.uk and Data.gov.in. Open data can be linked data—referred to as linked open ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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MuckRock
MuckRock is a United States–based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which assists anyone in filing governmental requests for information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public record laws around the United States, then publishes the returned information on its website and encourages journalism around it. History MuckRock was founded by Michael Morisy and Mitchell Kotler, graduates of Cornell University. The site's beta version went online in May 2010, and was part of the ''Boston Globe''s GlobeLab incubator program. MuckRock was granted a 501(c)(3) non-profit status by the IRS in June 2016. On June 11, 2018, MuckRock announced they would be merging with DocumentCloud. In 2016, the FOIA Machine project merged with MuckRock. FOIA Machine is a service that helps make FOIA requests for free. FOIA Machine was a separate organization hosted by The Center for Investigative Reporting and funded by the Knight Foundation, the Reynolds Institute of Journalism, a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Information Activism
Information is an abstract concept that refers to something which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the interpretation (perhaps formally) of that which may be sensed, or their abstractions. Any natural process that is not completely random and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analogue signals, poems, pictures, music or other sounds, and currents convey information in a more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation. The concept of ''information'' is relevant or connected to various concepts, including constraint, communication, control, data, form, education, knowledge, meaning, understanding, mental stimuli, pattern, perception, proposition, representation, and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Investigative Reporters And Editors
Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE) is an American nonprofit organization that focuses on improving the quality of journalism, in particular investigative journalism. Formed in 1975, it presents the IRE Awards and holds conferences and training classes for journalists. Its headquarters is in Columbia, Missouri, at the Missouri School of Journalism. It is the largest and oldest association of investigative journalists in the world. Programs of IRE include the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, which aims to foster excellence in data journalism. History Beginnings After the resignation by President Nixon, 11 journalists met in Reston, Virginia. These journalists hoped, after they conducted investigative journalism during the 1960s and 1970s, to create a national association that could help journalists produce best practices in the craft. It was in that meeting that Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. was founded. A grant of $3,100 from t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, presents ''amicus curiae'' briefs, defends individuals and new Technology, technologies from what it considers abusive legal threats, works to expose government malfeasance, provides guidance to the government and courts, organizes political action and mass mailings, supports some new technologies which it believes preserve Liberty, personal freedoms and online civil liberties, maintains a database and web sites of related news and information, monitors and challenges potential legislation that it believes would infringe on Liberty, personal liberties and fair use, and solicits a list of what it considers are Patent misuse, abusive patents with intentions to defeat those that it considers are without merit (law), merit. History Foundat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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International Association Of Jewish Genealogical Societies
The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, Inc. (IAJGS) is an independent non-profit umbrella organization coordinating the activities and annual Convention (meeting), conference of 84 Jewish Family history society, genealogical societies worldwide. History The IAJGS was formed in the late-1980s. Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern and Sallyann Amdur Sack were instrumental in creating the initial concept, and assisted various member organizations with their formation. Annual conferences The IAJGS coordinates an annual conference on Jewish genealogy, which takes place in a different city each year. The conferences have an educational track and include opportunities for networking and meetings with SIGs and BOF groups. Topics like DNA testing are typically covered. In recent years, attendees have described success stories after hitting research roadblocks. Future conferences * 2020: San Diego, CA, 40th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. August 9–14, 2020 a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |