On Oct 1, 2014, at 4:01 PM, Rhodes, Gary <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I tried to get my site on the Pathway To History a year or so ago, and never got anywhere. My town was given an $18,000 grant to digitize records , archival records, some I found 25 years ago in an old town barn attic, and the application for the money said that the material would be put on Ancestry.com, ny page, a copy given to the fourth grade and I was supposed to get a copy from an FOIL request. Ancestry.com does not know anything about any of this. To my knowledge, the 4 th grade does not have a disc, as if something of this incredible use would be of much use to that age group, and I am still trying to get the discs I was promised. The $18,000bought a laptop, and the program and 30,000 images was apparently put on that and also on the town clerks computer. so much for public access, say putting the laptop at the town library, or the local genealogy research library in Watertown.
> 
> And no one will make the town do what it said it was going to do to get the $18,000.
> 
What’s the status of the FOIL request and if denied (or constructively denied by lack of response within the allotted time) has it been appealed?

As for making the town do what it obtained a grant to do, an Article 78 proceeding, maybe?  Or would you be able to copy the material off the town clerk’s computer, or is there some reason why that cannot be done?

NYS Historian’s “Report of Local Historian, January, 1927” form: “Can you suggest some method for printing your local minutes?”  Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s handwritten response on the form as Town of Hyde Park Historian: “Now being done up to 1875”.  From NYS Historian Alexander C. Flick’s January 10, 1927 reply: “I wish other localities throughout the state might be induced to take the same precaution for the preservation of its local records that you have done for Hyde Park.  In general I find a pronounced awakening of interest in the value of the old records and of the need of their preservation throughout the state.  If this movement can only gain a little more momentum, we shall soon be able to care for these records in every community.”

Flick’s was a nice thought, anyway.  His predecessor, NYS Historian James Sullivan had a similar wish concerning preservation of and access to municipal records, though it involved having copies (or originals?) of all municipal records on file with the State:

"Dr. Sullivan is particularly anxious that communities should preserve the letters received from soldiers at the front.  They will form a valuable part of the State War Museum, and now are often lost after being printed in a local newspaper.  The Division of Archives and History of the State has a permissive statue whereby it may take over for safe preservation the records in a township, if the township so desires.  In the past the cooperation of townships by contributing their records for the good of the whole State has not been active, due to a lack of realization of the broad system which is gradually being perfected in this country for centralization of national archives.
"France, England, and Germany have highly perfected centralization, said Dr. Sullivan.  In Berlin it is possible, by paying a small insurance and postage fee, to take advantage of a system which obtains from every part of the German Empire the town records which it is desired to consult.  The records are mailed to the Royal Library at Berlin, arriving in three or four days after request is filed.  This makes a national cycle of archives which not only puts the records on a plane of highest efficiency, but binds the whole state and promotes realization of the importance of preserving community records.  The national archives in Paris do the same thing but take a little more time about it.  The Record Office of London is the archaeological centre for Great Britain.  There is no such centralization in America, said Dr. Sullivan. […]
“‘If France can do this glorious work, why not America; why not New York State?’ asked Dr. Sullivan.”
"Preserving Our War-Time History; Dr. Sullivan Plans Great Museum at Albany-Part Each Locality Plays in Conflict-American, Unlike France, Slow to Realize Importance of This Work." N.Y. Evening Post. February 16, 1918: 12 cols 1-2.

Christopher K. Philippo