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DATABASES OF THE
DAY(Free for 10 Days!)
Floyd County, Virginia,
Death Records, 1853-1882
Formed in 1831 from nearby Montgomery County and located southwest
of Roanoke, Floyd County, Virginia was home to more than 10,000
persons in the mid-nineteenth century. This database reveals
valuable information on nearly 1,800 men and women who died
in the county between 1853 and 1882. It was compiled from microfilm
copies of the original documents, and researchers will find
the deceased person's name, race, sex, death date, cause of
death, age, parents’ names, and birthplace. To those seeking
Virginian ancestors, this collection can be a helpful source
of information.
Bibliography: Fridley, Beth. "Floyd Co., Virginia Death Records,
1853-1882." Orem, UT: Ancestry, Inc., 1999.
To search this database, go to:
http://www.ancestry.com/ancestry/search/3762.htm
Virginia Resources in the Online Store:
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Narratives of Early California:
Three Years in California
Following the Mexican-American war, California increasingly
drew thousands of men and women seeking a life in the new territory.
This database is the published journal of Walter Colton (1797-1851),
who lived in California from 1846-1849. A distinguished member
of California's high society, his florid prose recounts a number
of prominent social events of the period.
Bibliography: Library of Congress. "California As I Saw It,
1849-1900." vol. 9. [database on-line] Washington: Library of
Congress, 1999. Colton, Walter. "Three Years in California."
New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1850.
To search this database, go to:
http://www.ancestry.com/ancestry/search/3757.htm
California Resources in the Online Store:
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Rocky Mountain News (Denver,
Colorado), Obituaries, 1998-1999 (Update)
Colorado's oldest newspaper, the "Rocky Mountain News" serves
the over 1.6 million residents of the east-central part of the
state. This database is a collection of some obituaries from
the newspaper in 1998 and early 1999. Information provided often
includes birth date and location, occupation, military service,
surviving family members, and other biographical facts. Compiled
by the UMI Company in connection with the newspaper, it contains
nearly 2,500 records and about 10,000 names. For questions regarding
a particular obituary, inquiries can be directed to the newspaper
at 400 W. Colfax, Denver, CO, 80204, (303) 892-5000.
This database contains new material provided by the UMI Company
and previously posted material under the title “Rocky Mountain
News (Denver, Colorado), Obituaries, 1998.”
Bibliography: UMI Company. "Obituaries from the Rocky Mountain
News, 1998-1999." Orem, UT: Ancestry Inc., 1999.
To search this database, go to:
http://www.ancestry.com/ancestry/search/3619.htm
Colorado Resources in the Online Store:
http://shop.ancestry.com/ancestry/bcoloradob.html
TODAY'S FEATURED MAP
Central Britain
1715-1745
To view this map, go to:
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GENPAGEFINDER GOES
LIVE Wednesday, 12 May 1999
The world of family history on the Internet can seem like
an intimidating, incomprehensible mass because it is always
growing and always changing. Many researchers wonder how to
make sense or use of it all. GenPageFinder is a vital part of
the solution. GenPageFinder is a search engine, which currently
indexes the contents of over 200,000 genealogical Web pages
and is updated every week. It offers search results surrounded
by their immediate context and free from non-genealogical clutter.
GenPageFinder is a free service and a proud addition to the
Ancestry.com Online Genealogical Library.
GenPageFinder is now available on Ancestry.com. GenPageFinder
also appears as part of the Ancestry.com GlobalSearch results.
Some of the pages GenPageFinder will find are quite large. If
your keywords are not immediately visible on the page GenPageFinder
finds for you, try pressing Ctrl F and entering your keywords
again. This should take you to the spot on the page where your
keywords appear.
Whatever your research interests and whatever searching you’ve
already done, chances are that a search on GenPageFinder will
yield fruitful new sources.
Copyright Ancestry.com 1999
“COPYRIGHTS, PLAGIARISM, AND ETHICS:
Rights to Use Information”
by Donn Devine
Most of us began our family history research by gathering
as much information as possible from family sources. We may
have seen it as a logical way to start, or may have been fortunate
in receiving sound advice on how to begin.
Seldom does the beginner ask, "What can I properly do with
what I've learned?"
That question doesn't usually occur to us until after we have
spent considerable time, effort, and money, and realize we have
a substantial investment in our research. It's valuable, but
to whom does it belong? More specifically, who can do what with
each part of it?
Looking at genealogical research in the abstract, we see that
its subject matter has two components- facts, which are impressions
about reality that come to us through our senses and are stored
in our short-term or long-term memories, and our thoughts and
ideas, which give the facts significance. Facts and ideas together
constitute knowledge.
Knowledge is also called intellectual property, a term that
recognizes that it resides in people's intellects and that it
has real value. Even though intellectual property is intangible,
the use of it is regulated both by law and by well-developed
ethical principles that apply to scholarly activity.
USE OF FACTS AND IDEAS
Once knowledge is expressed outside the mind, both laws and
ethical standards regulate its use. A record of someone's own
thoughts, made solely as a memory aid, with no intention of
communicating it to someone else, belongs to that person, along
with the knowledge recorded. Both the record and the knowledge
it reflects enjoy legal protection like other property of its
owner.
If the record also includes someone else's knowledge that
is not generally known to others, that knowledge continues to
belong to the original owner, and it remains subject to any
restrictions the original owner placed on its further use.
It's not until a person decides to share knowledge with others-the
processes of communication, publication, or presentation-that
the question arises about ownership of the knowledge. At that
point, various laws and ethical standards come into effect,
which give the original holder some rights and control over
the uses that others can make of the knowledge.
PRIVACY LAW RESTRICTIONS
The law of privacy is one that every family historian needs
to understand. It protects living people from having details
of their private lives made public unless they have done something
to place themselves in the public eye, such as taking an office
or position in which there's a legitimate public interest, or
being involved in a crime or accident. The kinds of information
protected include the very things we're interested in for family
history-age, residence, occupation, relationships, and associations.
Living people who are not already public figures have a right
to keep personal information about themselves private, and they
can collect legal damages, just as for a physical injury, if
anyone violates that right. If your staid and proper elderly
aunt was once a burlesque queen, you reveal the fact at your
peril unless you have her permission-and preferably in writing,
in case there's any question later.
Other privacy laws of recent origin prohibit keepers of certain
records, most of them governmental, from releasing personal
information. These laws are directed at the record-keepers,
and provide penalties if they are violated, but usually don't
affect use of the same information obtained from other sources.
Records that are coming under such privacy restrictions include
birth, marriage, and death registrations for some years after
the event, and records relating to adoption, schooling, employment,
criminal activity, and health.
RESTRICTIONS BY AGREEMENT
Facts can't belong to anyone. However, someone who has exclusive
knowledge of a fact can set conditions and restrictions on its
future use. If your dear old aunt confided in you, with the
condition, "but don't tell anyone," that Grandpa died of a heart
attack in a house of ill repute, you have gained the same knowledge
she had, but if you share it with anyone else, you have violated
your agreed terms, and she may legally collect damages as for
any other breach of contract.
Similarly, someone who has assembled a collection of facts
and organized it in some useful way can place restrictions on
further use of the facts as a condition of allowing others to
use the collection. A typical example is a mailing list. People
who pay to use addresses from commercial mailing lists usually
have to agree that they will not keep copies of the addresses,
nor make any further use of them. Subscribers to online database
services are usually required to accept strict conditions on
the use they may make of data they retrieve. Such agreements
are binding on those who make them, and can be enforced by law,
but they don't affect people who may have come by the information
by accident.
COPYRIGHT LAW RESTRICTIONS
Copyright is among the best-known forms of intellectual property
protection, and family historians need to be aware of its effects.
While it can protect our own work, it also limits the use we
can make of others' work. To encourage authors to make their
works available to the public, copyright law gives authors the
exclusive right, over a number of years, to copy, publish, present,
or display the work; to make derivative works, such as translations
or condensations; or to assign those rights to others as they
see fit.
The period of copyright protection for works created since
1978 is the life of the author plus fifty years. For earlier
works, the initial period was twenty-eight years, and it could
formerly be extended for a second twenty-eight years. The renewal
period has now been increased to forty-seven years, providing
a total copyright term of seventy-five years, if the copyright
is renewed before the end of the initial twenty-eight-year term.
After the copyright has expired, the work is in the public domain,
and can be freely used by anyone. Before that, you need permission
to quote extracts. (SEE EDITOR’S NOTE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS
ARTICLE FOR LINKS TO UPDATED COPYRIGHT TERMS.)
It is important to understand that copyright does not protect
the use of facts or ideas, but only the originality with which
they are expressed in a particular work. The form of the expression
can be a written or printed document, a dramatic or musical
composition, a graphic image in two or three dimensions, or
an electronic recording, among other forms.
Under current U.S. copyright law, copyright in a work exists
from the time it is reduced to a form that can be perceived
by the senses, even before it is shared with anyone else. The
writer of a letter or an e-mail message has a copyright on that
particular expression of an idea as soon as it is written; this
copyright lasts the rest of the author's life, and for fifty
years thereafter. During that period, it is a violation of the
author's rights to pass the writing on to someone else without
permission.
However, there's no violation of the copyright if another
person takes the same idea and expresses it in another form,
so long as it is sufficiently different from the first work
that it represents an original expression in its own right.
No matter how much time and effort has gone into compiling
a work, there must also be some originality in its arrangement
or expression for copyright protection to apply. An alphabetical
index of names, for example, without some further innovative
or creative features, would probably not qualify.
OTHER LEGAL RESTRICTIONS
Patents and trademarks are other forms of legal protection
for intellectual property protection, although they have limited
application to family history. Patents protect useful inventions-practical
ideas that may have value in the marketplace-and give the inventor
exclusive use of the idea for a limited period, in exchange
for making it public. Trademarks identify the providers of products
or services, and are protected to prevent frauds on the public.
ETHICAL CONCERNS
Copyright law does not protect an author against having his
facts and ideas used by someone else without credit, so long
as the person who appropriates them uses different words to
express them. But while it may be legal, it's not right, as
most of us learned in high school composition. To take the ideas
of another without credit and present them as your own is called
plagiarism, and is perhaps the most serious offense a person
can commit in the world of intellectual or scholarly work.
In an academic setting, plagiarism is grounds for dismissal
of a faculty member or expulsion of a student, whatever the
motivation may have been. In my own undergraduate days, it happened
to a quixotic older student, a returning veteran of the Second
World War who was in his early thirties and close to graduation.
He had taken an essay by an early twentieth-century English
writer of some note, given it a new title with himself as author,
and submitted it to the undergraduate literary magazine. It
went through the usual review by student editors and English
faculty and was published as his. An alert reader quickly brought
its true author to the attention of university authorities.
At his disciplinary hearing, the offending student said he had
submitted the article as his own only to demonstrate that people
in the English department were not well-read. He was expelled
anyway.
In the federal government, the current official standards
on research misconduct require proof of intent before an offense
can be punished as misconduct. You probably would not lose a
research grant or be dismissed from employment for plagiarism
unless it was proved that you deliberately intended to appropriate
someone else's work as your own-as opposed, say, to having carelessly
failed to properly attribute it. But plagiarism is primarily
a matter of ethics, whatever the legal findings, and your reputation
among other researchers would not likely survive, even if you
kept your job.
In short, it is plagiarism, a major ethical offense, to use
the ideas and research results of others without attributing
them to the original researchers. It is also a major ethical
offense to present them deceptively or inaccurately, even if
properly attributed.
EXCEPTIONS TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
Generally, the copyright law prohibits any use whatever of
a copyrighted work, whether published or not, without the copyright
owner's permission. However, the law does carve out a few limited
exceptions in the interest of encouraging scholarship.
The principal one, widely used by family historians, is the
"fair use" exception, which allows some limited use of copyrighted
works without permission. Under it, an individual can make copies
from a copyrighted work for personal use, or a teacher for classroom
use. The limits of "fair use" aren't defined, but factors that
help determine them include the number of copies, how large
a portion of the work is copied, whether there is a charge for
them, and whether the copying substitutes for purchase of the
published work. You can also use limited quotations from a copyrighted
work in the context of scholarly or critical comment on them.
Libraries and archives enjoy a somewhat broader scope under
the "fair use" exception. They can, for example, copy entire
books or articles for interlibrary loan or to replace out-of-print
works.
However, making copies is hardly fair when it lowers the demand
for a readily available publication, depriving the publisher
of income and the author of royalties. Would you want this to
happen to your own book or pamphlet?
THE TEST
If all the information you plan to share came from your own
research into public records, you can share it without fear
of violating someone else's rights. But if some of your information
came from people, publications, or privately owned documents,
take a second look-there may be legal or ethical restrictions
or conditions on its use.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the Jan/Feb
1998 issue of Ancestry Magazine (vol. 16, no. 1). (Ancestry magazine
subscriptions are available at the reduced rate of $19.95 for
a limited time. Click http://shop.myfamily.com/ancestrycatalog/dept.asp?dept%5Fid=30000000
for more information.)
Since the time of its publication, there have been changes
to copyright law, in particular to the copyright terms. From
the U.S. Copyright Office page at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/circs/sl15.pdf
(Acrobat Reader is required to view this site.)
“The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, signed into
law on October 27, 1998, amends the provisions concerning duration
of copyright protection. Effective immediately, the terms of
copyright are generally extended for an additional 20 years.
Specific provisions are as follows:”
“For works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection
will endure for the life of the author plus an additional 70
years. In the case of a joint work, the term lasts for 70 years
after the last surviving author’s death. For anonymous and pseudonymous
works and works made for hire, the term will be 95 years from
the year of first publication or 120 years from the year of
creation, whichever expires first.”
“For works created but not published or registered before
January 1, 1978, the term endures for life of the author plus
70 years, but in no case will expire earlier than December 31,
2002. If the work is published before December 31, 2002, the
term will not expire before December 31, 2047.”
“For pre-1978 works still in their original or renewal term
of copyright, the total term is extended to 95 years from the
date that copyright was originally secured. There are additional
provisions regarding sound recordings made before February 15,
1972, termination of grants and licenses, presumption of an
author’s death, and reproduction by libraries and archives.
For further information about these provisions, call the Public
Information Office, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00
p.m., Eastern Time, except federal holidays, at 202-707-3000.
You may view this legislation at the Copyright Office Web site
at: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/s505.pdf
“ (Acrobat Reader is required to view this site.)
More information is available at the U.S. Copyright Office
site at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
“America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman
who was looking for something else . . . and most of the exploration
for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through
or around it. American was named after a man who discovered
no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.”
- Samuel Eliot Morison, 1887-1976
“The Oxford History of the American People” (1965)
PRODUCT OF THE DAY AT THE ONLINE STORE
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Best Wishes,
Juliana Smith, Editor, Ancestry Daily News
Rebekah Thorstenson, Associate Editor
Please feel free to circulate this newsletter to other genealogy
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