Joe Dragovich: I'm a believer that digital archives are: 1. Important for increasing access to historical records 2. Part of government's duty to preserve and make records available to citizens. Pennsylvania should not be giving ownership of digital records to ancestry.com www.dailyitem.com/news/inside-...

I'm a believer that digital archives are: 1. Important for increasing access to historical records 2. Part of government's duty to preserve and make records available to citizens. Pennsylvania should not be giving ownership of digital records to ancestry.com www.dailyitem.com/news/inside-...

Inside the Pa. court case pitting a genealogist against Ancestry.comwww.dailyitem.com Pennsylvania hired genealogy company Ancestry.com to digitize a sweeping list of historical documents. Now the company claims it owns those digital copies.

Massachusetts did so. As a non inhabitant no access on digitized newspapers, no clear digital rights situation with ancestry and others. If Digitisation is payed by public, data should be Access and Rights open.

As a person who was responsible for OCRing and scanning zillions of records of genealogy information at my first IT job at a library, I completely agree. We did that in house, and we made it in public to everyone. That's how it should be... 100% public domain

This is literally why the “work for hire” designation was invented

I am not following. Could you explain, please?

For this kind of work or creative like photography, design etc where someone was taken on short-term contract to produce it, “work for hire” on the contract meant you got paid for doing the work only and the client fully owned all of the output.

Seems the issue here is the outsourcing of ongoing hosting. Presumably a private company wouldn’t grant free access to it as their motive is to monetise the content, not own it as such.

I agree. The key issue here is the PA government trying to avoid building out their digital archive capability, rather than Ancestry being especially greedy (though that's probably also a component).

It's free for state residents though.

Ohhhhh Okay that makes complete sense. I had just never heard that term before 😅

Before I even clicked on the link, I knew Reclaim the Records would be fighting the good fight.

Newspapers.com, owned by Ancestry, already has the solution. Their deal with libraries is "We'll digitize your newspapers for an X year exclusive; after X years, you can put the newspapers online at your site."

Mass digitization is not free or cheap. So let Ancestry do it, recoup their investment & after a few years, the government gets a set of files that they can host themselves or Archive.org.

This Is pretty close to the ideal model in my view. The company gets data to enhance their platform, and the state gets a set of files without having to build their own digitization infrastructure. But the state needs to have ownership, and responsibility for the files.

state and governments having digital infrastructure is infinitely preferable to ancestry existing and persisting

Redundancy is preferable: copies held by govs and elsewhere. There's an acronym for it: LOCKSS. Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe.

lol i am a former digital preservation professional so: no fucking shit/read my bio/wipe your feet before coming into my mentions. if i was in charge i would start with nationalizing ancestry charge mormons excessive fees

The article states Ancestry was contracted to do the work, so it seems they have already been paid.

Partially agree. A contract was certainly signed but that doesn't guarantee that money changed hands or that what Ancestry charged fully covered costs. The contract that Newspapers.com offers libraries includes free on-site online access to the newspapers they contribute. No fees are involved.

True. The details of such a contract should be publicly available. The gov may have allowed Ancestry more "ownership" than should be for public records. Let them charge consumers instead of gov paying for services.

Anyone can file a FOIL request: www.openrecords.pa.gov/RTKL/HowToFi...

I totally agree. As taxpayers, we paid for people to make these lists. That a company can now charge me to see them seems wrong.

The company isn't charging taxpayers in the state, though. It's free for PA residents to look at PA records. This guy is suing because he's in another state and he has to pay.

I've seen examples where archives make people travel to the site to access digital files. For example, the UK #c18th state papers are digitized, but you need to go to Kew to view them. It's annoying, but I get it. The key is the archive, owns, stores, and controls them.

Not every archive can afford that, dude. Most of us are scraping by while random people bitch at us because we haven't digitized everything and given it to them for free.

Thanks for the correction. Should have read more than the headline. In NYS access to older records seems to be limited to Ancestry subscribers. I suppose their argument is that without their work digitizing them, one would have to go to Albany or the county seat to consult them.

Not if you are a NY state resident: www.nysl.nysed.gov/gate/ancestr...

Ancestry.com New York: Research Library: NYS Librarywww.nysl.nysed.gov

But my private-public partnership promoting efficiencies that governent just can't accomplish!

A small, but important distinction I would make, these are not digital records, they are digitised records. While in a perfect world, the govt would do the digitising, we know that isn’t the reality we live in. So it’s a trade off. It’s either access via payment or for many people, no access at all.

A very important distinction. Thank you. I think what I would want out of it is the state in possession of a copy of the digitized records, even if they use ancestry as the means of distribution.

Absolutely. About the guy who filed suit: what was his level of access before PA contracted with Ancestry? Travel to PA or send in a researcher for hire. PA tried to improve access & got sued for it.

I live & pay taxes in NY. What services am I entitled to for free from the other 49 states? In the case of pre-computer records, I believe it is high-quality metadata about their holdings & clear access policies.

If they can afford to digitize for free for everyone, not just state residents, fabulous! Much gratitude! But it isn't something I have a right to demand.

A good middle ground for governments is putting *indexes* online. If I can check an index and rule out the existence of a certain record, great! I don't have to beg or hire a search from staff.

Sorry, one more thing. From the article: Ferretti argues that "because he doesn’t live in Pennsylvania, he would have to pay a subscription fee...to access the records." This is false. As a resident of NYC, he can access Ancestry for at free at all NYPL branch libraries.

Agree 100%

Cannot access link from EU due to GPDR. That said: such documents are of public interest and need to be accessible for the broad public, subscribers or not. I used be a subscriber to ancestry dot com, but I cannot condone such behavior or attitude.

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