Our Cole Family Tree

Important Information Regarding Use Of The

Genealogical Data Contained At This Site

COPYRIGHT: The data and information contained at this website is protected by copyright © 1999-2000, Robert Cole. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The information is published and provided here for educational use. Exceptions to the copyright policy are granted for and restricted to limited personal use by genealogical hobbyists and non-professional family historians, as further detailed and explained below.

CONDITIONS OF USE: Put very simply, the information, files and data at this website are for your personal use only. In transcribing, copying, downloading, printing or otherwise using the data contained herein you agree to not further upload, transfer, copy, share, give away, sell, or make this information available to anyone or anything else in paper, electronic or magnetic format beyond reasonable personal use. I have put a lot of work into compiling this data, with information gathered from many, many sources, as can be noted by the bibliographic endnotes and source references. While some sources were public records, many of the sources of family history were human; a few of whom expressed concern about privacy and unwanted commercial use of the data. As a genealogist my main concerns are the accurate storage, total transmission and proper personal use of the statistics and data contained herein, and the trust that was shown to me by those who contributed information to this project. I expect the same from those who receive and use the data at this website. I hope this statement gives you an adequate explanation of my reasoning and shows you why I consider this "Personal Use Only" policy extremely important.

PRIVACY: In addressing privacy concerns, genealogy statistics and family history information in published books generally are of interest only to direct and lineal family members, descendants of individuals with a similar surname, and other family historians and genealogists. Commercial interests would probably not find it worth their time extracting information from a book for money-making purposes. But names and statistics electronically or magnetically stored and transmitted may potentially be of some commercial appeal to organizations gathering statistical information for profit; whether it be a commercial collector of genealogical records in disk format eager to compile and make money on mass marketing the data to other genealogists, or a firm soliciting names and addresses, developing personal profiles for magazine subscriptions, and then selling this information to a multitude of other businesses. I don't want to leave the people who have graciously offered me their genealogical data with a feeling of such undeserved invasion of privacy, or subject the living offspring of these ancestral families recorded herein to unsolicited commercial marketing ventures. In the name of privacy, discretion and in some cases confidentiality, I also felt the obligation to not include unedited event notes in my records on this website or information on living relatives. While that may detract from the potential effect of this format on the amount of information available to be transferred to your records, it shouldn't affect the usefulness of this data on your overall database of names, events and statistics. If your are sincerely interested in detailed notes and more specific source references for specific individuals, I encourage you to write and inquire about further information.

STANDARDIZATION OF DATA: While I took great pains to ensure the bibliographical completeness in citing references and sources in my original records, I have abbreviated this information included at this website. While the data presently recorded in my source references shows the primary source of genealogy information cited, once again I defer to potential privacy concerns as my primary reason for the abridged citations. Another reason I do this is to encourage personal correspondence from others researching similar family lines. As you may know, transmission of genealogical information in GEDCOM format often results in the loss of this bibliographical data anyway, as GEDCOM file transfer protocols are not completely standardized. They vary from genealogical program to program. It seems software programs accept GEDCOM data in as many different ways as there are programs. I have no control over which family history program you will use in transferring and using the data on this website. It is also a concern of mine that individuals downloading information may or may not transfer all source references as I have recorded (many programs just ask you to manually input from whom you received this information, which, if you only put my name and address, would distance you from the source by one more step with no record of the sources I used to compile the data). While this may be okay for your own use, further transferring that data to a public domain or commercial enterprise would erode the legitimacy of the data even further. I also don't want to concern myself about finding a great source of connecting ancestral information on some obscure Internet database, spend money, time and energy investigating the sources of the information and then discover it is my own data, two or three times removed (such as recently discovered on the Kindred Konnections website, where my data---from an old non-supported, cancelled homepage---was downloaded and indexed without authorization). I encourage you to set the standards high for your information, both ethically and legitimately. Before downloading data with incomplete source references I urge you to contact me with an offer to exchange complete data rather than just collecting names with no back-up citations.

RELIABILITY: While I generally trust the reliability of the data gathered by me or submitted to me in compiling this information, some of it was not verified by me through official sources as accurate or totally without error. In places where conflicting information was known I tried reporting such. The sources used by me vary in dependability, reliability, accuracy, and soundness. In my own records I have subjectively rated the reliability of each referenced source of recorded events, but I know this rating method may be lost upon transferring the information by disk for use in another program. Some of the information contained herein comes from the memory of a contributor or the records of a family researcher like myself, unfortunately usually with no reference to their source used or cited. I rate these sources as "Questionable" from purely a Researcher's or Archivist's point of view, although it may be totally reliable to the person who gave it. I rate it as questionable because I do not possess or have not viewed the official document that states such is so. Conversely, I usually rate the information on an official record, such as a birth certificate, as "Primary," or as totally reliable, even though I have found after further research select instances of forgery, purposeful falsehoods and clerical errors recorded on some. Most genealogical programs will not record these reliability factors or transfer this trustworthiness distinction to or from a GEDCOM format. Some programs don't even accept sources and bibliographical notes at all, or may transfer the data in such a way that makes it virtually useless. I hope this explains my reasoning for this policy sufficiently enough.

AGREEMENT: By utilizing this website and the information contained thereon, you agree to abide by my "Personal Use Only" policy. If you are not willing to accept these restrictions, please do not use the information. Further questions or clarifications can be addressed to the copyright holder, Robert Cole at P.O. Box 194, Appleton, WI 54912, or by e-mail at <bobcole1@juno.com>.

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