| Are you a genealogy thief? Checklist to determine if you are a thief:
- Have you copied and pasted personal information (not facts) and notes from
a web site to your family tree program, word processor, or other web
site without asking permission?
If you are only copying the names with a birth or death date or even a marriage,
there would be no polite need to cite your source, however, if you copy
complete birth, death, marriage, and location information then you should cite
your source. The reason to cite your source being that you did not previously
have all this information and you have now copied someone else's compilation
of those facts.
If you have done any of the above, then you are a genealogy thief! Will
anyone know you
are a thief? Well, yes, legitimate researchers will automatically
know where the
research came from. Mistakes will stick out like a sore thumb,
and you will be talked
about and avoided like the plague. Is this what you want?
I think that everyone has
made mistakes at some time or another, so therefore I
propose the following ways
to redeem yourself!
never to late to be
polite and you just might benefit even more for being honest.
See the
following examples (please feel free to copy!)
Example 1
I am writing this letter to open a line of correspondence with you concerning
the
(whatever surname, example Box) line. In my excitement at finding new family
information
I am afraid that I may have overstepped being polite in adding your
information to my data without checking with you. I would like to correct this
mistake by taking the time to do so now. I now realize that communication is the
way to go, as I am sure we have much that we could share with each other. I look
forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Example 2
I recently found your picture of my great-great-grandfather on your web page
and
would like to request permission to print it in a family book that my family
is doing
for our parents 50th anniversary? I look forward to hearing
from you.
Sincerely,
Example 3
Last year, upon running across your web site, I copied information from your
mother’s diary into my family tree program. I am afraid this was a terrible
mistake
to do, and I am writing to apologize. It seems that when I uploaded my Gedcom
to one of the commercial sites, all the notes I copied were transferred
too. Now,
other people have copied the notes, and are writing me in reference to
"my"
mother’s diary and copying these notes to their files. There is no way for
me to
undo the damage, as there is no telling how many people have downloaded my
file.
Is there something that I could post in my file to make amends to you?
Sincerely,
Example 4
Last week I found in your gedcom where (example – Sally married Jessie). I
then
went to the FamilySearch.com web site and was able to pull up the marriage
record
with the spelling combination from your web site. I now realize that you
posted the
information there, so I am writing to ask you where you found this
information? I would
be more than will to reimburse you for the costs of copy
should you happen to have a
copy. I look forward to hearing from you and the
possibility of us sharing information.
Sincerely,
Example 5
Last year, I ran across a cemetery that you transcribed that had many of my
family
members in it. Being new to genealogy at that time, I did not write down
the source
information. I have since learned to source everything and I just
wanted to write
and thank you for the hard work you have done. Please keep up
the good work.
You have helped so many people and I thank you.
Sincerely,
Example 6
I want to apologize for not getting back with you sooner. I want to thank you
for using your valuable time to respond to my query, I hope the information will
help me along in my research.
Thank you,
|
