An evening with
Brooke Schreier Ganz
Founder and President of Reclaim The Records
Wednesday, January 27, 2021 at 7:00 PM via Zoom
It's free but registration is required.
Brooke Schreier Ganz joins us to discuss the work of Reclaim The Records to secure open access to public records. Brooke will talk about resources that have been returned to the public and how genealogists can access and use them for free.
Led by Brooke, 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most of which had never been open to the public before in any location or format, or else were only available in very outdated formats such as microfiche in limited locations but had never gone online before.
Join us to learn more about the successes and ongoing efforts of Reclaim The Records and how we can all support the work of this organization.
This event is co-sponsored by:
Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society, New England Chapter (AAHGSNE)
David Allen Lambert Library
Essex Society of Genealogists, Inc.
Friends of Irish Research
Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston (JGSGB)
Massachusetts Society of Genealogists, Inc. (MSOG)
New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (NEAPG)
The Irish Ancestral Research Society (TIARA)
Western Massachusetts Genealogical Society