When we received the Junior Funeral Home records, our university attorney advised us that death certificates with cause of death were restricted for fifty years but after that, they're open. I don't know how you redact from microfiche. Normal redaction is to make a photocopy of the original, block out the items to be redacted, make a new photocopy of that, and replace the original with that. While there are more than 100 exemptions to public records, I'm not aware of any that would remove the mentioned information. I do know that both Florida and the U.S. Government have been lax in putting language in such laws pertaining to time periods. For example, in the rush after 9/11, Florida passed a law forbidding disclosure of any architectural drawing any part of a building owned or leased by the State of Florida. I never got an answer from our university attorney when I asked about all the historic preservation drawings of historic buildings, the Historic American Buildings surveys online at LC, and drawings in architect records that we hold --- where such buildings are now property of a state agency (e.g. Dorr House). It has been pointed out to me that the FERPA law governing student education records has no beginning date which has led some places to refuse access to information about students who attended school in the 19th century. In Illinois we had a law that no state record prior to 1870 could be destroyed (due to the belief that we lost a lost of Illinois history, county records, etc. to the Great Chicago Fire of 1870), but in the late 1990s, to our shock, a remote warehouse of the City of Chicago was found to house in crates, the records of the city and county that were thought to have been lost in 1870. I have not heard if the law was changed. Dean On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:57 PM, Katherine Rudolph <khrhome@yahoo.com> wrote: > I'm working my way through the NGS Home Study course and came to the > Probate lesson, which led me to visit the Escambia Archives to review some > early probate files. I was stunned to discover that Florida's privacy laws > require that a probate file from 1834 be reviewed by the clerk first and > that any inventories, guardianship files, or cause of death be redacted. > Meaning I would have to come back another day to give the clerk time to > review the 6 pages of microfiche. From 1834, I asked? Surely the statute has > a "statute of limitations" that would exclude something that old from > redaction! What a learning experience! > What's the history on this statute? I understand that it is due to be > reviewed in 2014. Is there anything that can be done to persuade the > legislature that a time limit should be set on the privacy requirement for > historical research? > Kay Rudolph > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FL-WFGS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message > -- Dean DeBolt, University Librarian/University Archivist University Archives and West Florida History Center University of West Florida Library 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514-5750 ddebolt@uwf.edu; 850-474-2213