Index to Albany death records, through December 31, 1915

To Whom It May Concern:

Hi, my name is Brooke Schreier Ganz, and I am the president and founder of a non-profit organization called Reclaim The Records. We use Freedom of Information laws and open data laws to get copies of inaccessible archival record sets released back to the public, for free use.

Pursuant to the New York State Freedom of Information Law (1977 N.Y. Laws ch. 933), I hereby request the following records:

I would like to receive a copy of the index to all Albany death records, from as early as such records are available (presumably the mid to late nineteenth century?) through December 31, 1915, inclusive. Please note that this request is for the basic index (or finding aid) only, and I am not asking for any of the actual death certificates. Our organization is hoping to make it easier for genealogists to learn which records your office may have on file in the first place, so that they can order copies of their relatives' death certificates from your office or from the state.

While vital records, including actual death certificates, are subject to privacy laws, the basic index to the records is required to be open to the public under the New York State Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Almost two years ago, I filed this same request with the New York State Department of Health in Albany, asking for copies of their statewide death index. At that time, they only maintained their statewide death index copy in old-fashioned microfiche format, and only at a small number of upstate libraries. After a seventeen-month-long fight with them, including legal discussions with my attorneys and their Records Access Officers, the state finally conceded that an index to these records must be made available to the public under FOIL. I received my copy of the state death index from them a few months ago and our organization has recently put it online for free public use, at the Internet Archive. Having this digital copy of the index will help millions of people with New York State roots research their ancestors and order more record copies from the state.

However, that statewide death index we won, which runs from 1880-1956, does not include any deaths for Albany, Buffalo, or Yonkers prior to about 1914 or 1915, because those cities weren't great about compliance with the law. I would like to try to fill in the gaps in the online statewide file with your city's information, so that people can track down their ancestors' records and order copies from you.

Please let me know in which formats you have this death index. If you have the data on microfilm, I will be happy to order copies of those, as it would probably be the easiest format to duplicate. If you have never microfilmed or digitized the index to your death records before, I would prefer that you scan or digitally photograph all the pages at a high definition. Because this is a FOIL request, I recognize that I will be required to reimburse your fair costs for doing this, either by using in-house staff at your office, or perhaps hiring an outside vendor to do the scanning or photography for you. I will also pay for the insured shipping of the record copies to California, if necessary.

Please be advised that if you ignore or deny this request, our organization will take your office to court, under the New York Freedom of Information Law. In the past three years, we have already sued two different New York City agencies for copies of genealogical records and won settlements both times, and even won our attorneys fees the second time. And we are currently engaged in litigation against the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, fighting for copies of their statewide birth index and death index. Hopefully, that kind of legal action will not be required in this case, but we did just want to point it out to you from the outset, so you would at least have fair warning. A FOIL request like this is not a favor, it's the law, and we are willing and able to use the law.

Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions or concerns about any part of this FOIL request. My phone number is 917-572-3834 and my e-mail is info@reclaimtherecords.org . Please inform me of any potential charges in advance of fulfilling my request.

Please also be advised that this FOIL request is being filed publicly through the website MuckRock.com, and all correspondence about this request will be immediately published to the general public.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within five business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Brooke Schreier Ganz
Founder and President, Reclaim The Records
https://www.ReclaimTheRecords.org/

Hi Mr. Campbell,

Thank you for this cost breakdown. But this explanation of your estimate is showing a different number from the one your original estimate to me. You originally replied it would be "Copies:$10,440.00". But here, it seems that you misread that number, and that it is "10,440 copies at 0.25 per [copy equals] $2,610.00", so the raw cost of the copies is $2,610 not $10,440.00. Please confirm that $2,610 is the actual price for the copies. Also, we'd really prefer scans or digital photographs, not paper copies, and luckily the New York Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) allows for that.

Also, I am confused why there are 10,440 sheets of paper to be copied (or scanned or photographed) in the first place. We had asked in our FOIL request for the INDEX to Albany deaths. Are there really over 10,000 sheets of paper in the index alone, or are you confusing this with the number of Albany death certificates?

What is the format of this index? Is it in bound books, and if so are they oversized? Can you send an example page or two? Or is it a database? If the latter, can we just get a digital copy sent to us, in SQL or CSV or even XLS format?

We may be able to get our own person onsite to do the copying -- or perhaps digital photography. That would just leave us with the costs of the actual copies/scans/photos, which you say is $2,610.00 and which we would be happy to pay.

Finally, in what year does this death index start, exactly? We wrote "presumably the mid to late nineteenth century?" in our FOIL request because we weren't sure. And do you know how many listings/names (not pages) there are, or an estimate?

Once we have answers to all of these questions, we would like to go forward to get these scanned or photographed. It would be a great help to genealogists and historians to finally have them online. Looking forward to your reply.

- Brooke

Hi everyone,

My name is Brooke Schreier Ganz and I'm the founder and president of a
non-profit group called Reclaim The Records. We're a group of
archivists, genealogists, historians, and journalists who work to get
old genealogical records put online for free public use.

I'm writing to follow up about a FOIL request I filed late last year.
The last response was in late November, and I just wanted to pick it
up again and get it moving. It's FOIL request # W007329-090717. We
are asking for the right to get a copy of all the old Albany death
records, from as early as such records are available (presumably the
mid to late nineteenth century?) through December 31, 1915, inclusive.

You can see an e-mail chain with the original FOIL request text and
all the responses, in chronological order, here:

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/albany-720/index-to-albany-death-records-through-december-31-1915-42761/

When we left off corresponding, the e-mails basically said the following:

1) Albany agreed that our organization has the right to get copies of
these old records under FOIL.

2) Albany said there would be 10,440 photocopies needed to fully copy
these old records under FOIL. (One e-mail accidentally listed this as
$10,440, but then confirmed that it really meant 10,440 pages of
copies, not dollars.) At $0.25 per copy, which is what FOIL allows,
that would be $2,610.00 in total.

3) However, Albany also says that there are not actually 10,440 pages
of records, but rather that the old books are just so big that it
would take multiple copies per page to get all the information, and
those multiple copies per page add up to 10,440 copies. So perhaps
it's more like 5,220 actual book pages? Or fewer?

4) Reclaim The Records is willing to hire a vendor to come on site and
digitally photograph the books (using a digital camera on a tripod) so
that it would be one photo per page instead. Or someone from Albany
can do the digital photography instead, and charge us for the photos.
That way, all the information can fit on one document per page. This
would also be much much safer for the books, because you wouldn't need
to plunk them upside down on top of a Xerox machine several times per
page and risk breaking the old bindings.

5) Finally, Albany originally said (apparently on advice from
Corporation Counsel) that wanted to charge "8-months salary (temp
agency 23.01 per hour based on a 37.5 hour work week) $27,720.00" for
the labor associated with this work, whether it's Xerox copies or
photos. But I just spoke to the Committee on Open Government (COOG) in
Albany and their staff attorney confirmed for me that you can't charge
us for the labor, under the New York State Freedom of Information Law.
You can only charge for copies, and only the actual number of copies.

6) COOG also confirmed that you can't require that you use your own
staff time (i.e. there is no "union" problem here) rather than my
offer of a vendor if the books are already available to the
public...which you have already admitted they are, by agreeing to
provide them to me under FOIL.

So, to sum it all up:

I would like to hire a vendor to come onsite and digitally photograph
all the old books. Your staff are welcome to supervise them and they
will work with your schedule as needed. And if you need them to prove
they have experience working carefully with archival documents, I can
arrange that. If that's not okay, then someone on your staff can
digitally photograph the books, and you can charge us per-photo, at
the same rate that NY FOIL allows for the cost of each digital scan,
which I think is $0.25/each.

But in any case, it would not be 10,440 copies x $0.25 each =
$2,610.00, because it would now be fewer than 10,440 photographs,
since each photo would encompass a whole page. So if there really are
5,220 actual book pages, it would be 5,220 x $0.25 each = $1305.00.

And you wouldn't be able to charge the $27,720.00 for labor under NY FOIL.

Finally, I would be happy to share all these digital copies of the
records with Albany, for your free use. You would even be welcome to
re-publish them or send the images out to genealogists when they write
to you for copies of their ancestors' death records. That also means
that the original old record books could be stored somewhere safely,
having finally been digitized.

Please reply by e-mail or give me a call at 917-572-3834 so we can
discuss this matter further. I would love to get this FOIL request
handled in the near future. I would also suggest you reach out to the
staff attorneys at COOG, as they give free legal advice over the phone
to both FOIL requestors and to state and local agencies.

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.