Hi Pat,
This makes me think I am fortunate to live on the Eastern side of the state
where IGS doesn't know we exist!
Please reconsider. Don't let this blow hard push you around. It doesn't
sound as if she understands what we are doing. I doubt she has any
knowledge of copyright laws or the internet. The Washington County site as
a whole is none of their business. YOU own the copyright on that.
I'm sure you're aware of copyrights and haven't taken any of their
copyrighted publications and published them illegally. As long as you
haven't done that, they can't bother you. Public domain records certainly
don't belong to IGS alone and if they want to control those with expired
copyrights, they had better get to a lawyer and renew the copyright. It
would be nice if we could work with them but I don't see that happening any
time soon.
Other states and counties have had similar trouble with Gen. Societies.
There are cases where the County Coordinator or the State Coordinator was
able to work with them, establish a relationship, and work together
eventually. Gen. Soc. who allowed indexes to their publications online
found that their sales increased once researchers knew they would find
their ancestors in the books. It doesn't hurt to have the price and mailing
address right there handy either. Some CCs have even done as Lucy did and
offered to make web sites for them. Most have been interested in the offer.
What about contacting the sextons of those cemeteries yourself? And, unless
its a private cemetery, no one can stop you from walking the cemetery
yourself and writing down the inscriptions. That's time consuming and
impractical in the winter, I know.
At 03:18 PM 9/03/1999 -0700, you wrote:
I have just returned from the Idaho Historical and Genealogical
Library. I
wanted to copy the Cemetery records for Cambridge, Salubria and the
transcriptions from the Hillcrest Cemetery in Weiser that contain some
birth and death information. I was not allowed to copy them until I
received permission from the Idaho Genealogical Society who may or may not
have done the transcriptions. (It is very confusing as to where some of the
records came from. Some may have been transcribed locally and then recopied
from the originals by the Idaho Genealogy Society in 1950-60).
The Librarian called an IGS board member contact for me who happened to be
on her way to the Library. I waited for her to arrive and explained who I
was and what I wanted to copy and why. She answered " please answer me why
in the world we would allow you to do that". She was very concerned about
money, stating several times that researching for people was the way they
made their money. I was also warned that "someone is going to get their
butt sued off over this" as "copy writes are good forever" and "some
board
members are very upset over this issue". I don't know if the Idaho
Genealogical Society has publications for sale or if they just "make their
money" doing research. This 'lady' did give me permission to put the
Society's address, phone number and research fee on my site. I have
attempted to locate a site that would steer me to what they do offer but
all links offered for Idaho at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgw/links/idaho.htm came up 404 - Object Not
Found.
I would note that in the Province of Ontario, Canada, the Genealogy
Societies have submitted their cemetery transcription indexes to a Web site
called Ontario Cemetery Finding Aid. Once a name of interest is found and a
cemetery noted, a researcher can then order the transcription from the
publishing Society. All are served. It would seem in Idaho, you must pay a
researcher from the Society $10 an hour to search all Idaho State cemetery
records to try and locate a person who may or may not be buried here.
Washington County has been removed from the Internet. Someone else can "get
their butt sued off". Nor do I need to be upset by ignorant people such as
the representative of the Idaho Genealogical Society I definately did not
have the 'pleasure' of speaking with today.
Sincerely, Pat Roloff
___________________________________________
Elaine Johnson <elaine(a)ida.net>
Home Page:
http://www.ida.net/users/elaine/
Be sure to see The IDGenWeb Project at
http://www.usgenweb.org/id
IDGenWeb mirror site:
http://www.rootsquest.com/~idaho/index.htm