Reclaim the Records

reclaimtherecords.org

We want our records back -- and we get them! We’re Reclaim The Records, a new not-for-profit activist group of genealogists, historians, researchers, and open government advocates. We identify important record sets and databases that ought to be in the public domain but which are being wrongly restricted by government archives, libraries, and agencies. Then we use Freedom of Information laws 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. Since 2015, we've launched nine FOI lawsuits against various city, state, and federal government agencies, winning ground-breaking cases around the country. We've also won numerous major public records requests that didn't need to go to litigation. Then we digitize everything we win and put it all online for free, without any paywalls or usage restrictions, so that our country's history can never be locked up again. Some of our recent wins include the first-ever free and online publications of the New York City marriage license index, the New Jersey marriage and death indices, the New York State birth, marriage and death indices, the Missouri birth and death index, the Mississippi death index, the Wyoming marriage and death index, the BIRLS database from Veterans Affairs, the Nebraska death index, the New York City "geographical" birth index, and more. In short, we bring public records back to the public domain. We started our work in 2015 and became a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit in February 2017. And we're expanding nationwide. As of July 2020, we have now acquired and published more than thirty million records from government archives and agencies. We've worked in (and with, and sometimes against) records repositories as small as a city clerk's office and as large as NARA. And we're coming soon to an archive near you. For more information, or to help support our work, check out our website: https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/