Polk Detroit City Directory 1928-29 - Getting It Back Online

Those of you who have used this valuable historical resource from the University of Michigan Digital Library over the last several years may have noticed that quite suddenly, it is no longer available online. :confused:

Even when registering with a user name and password, the library will deny online access to this particular publication. When inquiring, I got an email reply stating: "As the rights are unclear, it is available for in-library use only."

So, I contacted the InfoGroup out of Omaha, NB who purchased R.L. Polk about 15 years ago. My contact there told me that the rights and permissions expire after 75 years, so there are no legal obstacles to once again, posting it online.

For us amateur historians, architectural buffs and family tree researchers, it is important that this resource remain free online as a public service as it was previously.

The 1928-29 directory is a pre-Depression, pre-Expressway look at Detroit when most of our ancestors had already arrived here. One example of how this directory has been helpful can be seen in this old thread regarding a second-empire house, House Next to Senate Antiques Torn Down: [[http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...City+Directory)

If you can find great-grandma's old house in the directory, you won't have to wade through the scads of pages in the 1940 Census, which has just been made available online through the government. It's not searchable by name, only address. So, you could just look up the name in the Polk, find the address, and plug that in the census search. Instant success!

I've asked the InfoGroup to contact the library directly to assure them there would be no legal problems to re-posting the directory online. However, a word from you, members of DetroitYes, would go a long way in showing the U of M what an important resource this is to us. ;)

Kindly email them and ask that the R.L. Polk Detroit City Directory 1928-29 be restored to its former status free online:

Digital Library Production Service
300 Hatcher North
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1205
Ph: 734-647-8000
Fax: 734-647-6897
Email: dlps-support@umich.edu

Thank you SO MUCH for all your help! Hopefully, we can get the directory back online again soon.

Here is the response I received from the University of Michigan:

Thank you for your message. You are correct in noting that this volume was previously available to the general public. As this material is migrating to HathiTrust in the near future, we recently changed access to match what is found there. While some titles, like this one, became more restricted, many more opened up because of the copyright research done for HathiTrust. I will pass this on to our Copyright Office.

So I'm guessing the 1928 Detroit Polk Directory will be found on HathiTrust "in the near future". :mad: I told them that the gov't made the 1940 Census public with no restrictions...why not this? So, if anybody sees it up and running, please let us know.
Thanks!

United States Census reports are confidential for 72 years. The 1940 census was released in 2012. The 1950 census will be released in 2022. You can search the 1940 census for free by name at
http://www.ancestry.com/1940-census

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So, I contacted the InfoGroup out of Omaha, NB who purchased R.L. Polk about 15 years ago. My contact there told me that the rights and permissions expire after 75 years, so there are no legal obstacles to once again, posting it online.

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They've obviously not heard of 'the Sonny Bono Act', which extended the 75-years.

Thank you for fighting this fight Kathy. I noticed that the Directory was no longer available to public access about a week ago when I went to confirm some information, and emailed the U of M Library. I'm glad to see that you at least got a response. I will contact them again at the address you provided above.

The U of M Library has apparently been reconfiguring a lot of their online historical collections. Their wonderful online collection of photos from the Burton Historical Collection, which was an amazing resource full of large format photos of 19th and early 20th century Detroit and Michigan, has also been "retired" without warning. They now refer you to the DPL's own Burton site, which does have many photos online, but nowhere near the breadth that was available through the U of M Library's site.

I hope the map and atlas collections, which are also an invaluable resource to anyone interested in local history, stay up and open to the public. They have so far, but I definitely have my fears.

Along with the extreme diminution of Wayne State's "Virtual Motor City" site of historic 20th century photos [[I'm told "unofficially" that the culprit there was the Detroit News' legal dept. asserting their copyrights and the possibility of charging for rights at some time in the future), the bonanza of important local historical research information that was once freely and publicly available online seems to be quickly diminishing.

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Originally Posted by wilderness

They've obviously not heard of 'the Sonny Bono Act', which extended the 75-years.

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This only applies to post-1923 material [[1923 being, not coincidentally, the founding year of the Walt Disney Co.) for which the copyrights have been renewed. It sounds to me like Polk is saying that they did not renew the copyright on this material.

Thank you, Eastside Al, for your support and encouragement. I was wondering if i was the only one who cared about this. I just wanted to find the house where my aunt was born, and I'm still determined to do it, one way or another.

I was not aware of the photos in the Burton Collection also being suppressed. I am very unhappy about this. It's one thing to not make our Detroit history available to the descendants of those that made it happen. But to first make it readily available, and then to take it away, is nothing short of unconscionable.

They already opened Pandora's box; it was already out there...the photos, the addresses, the business names, the schools and churches. What good is chronicling it all "for posterity" when "posterity" is forbidden from accessing it?

I understand The Detroit News charging for editorial access to news stories; they're a business, after all. But to deny access to 75+ year old historical educational material to people, particularly those who might not have the money is just not right. Plus, the universities are tax-payer, tuition and alumni funded entities. [[I know WSU always hits me up for money.) Aren't they supposed to be "educators"? To deny us our history is to deny us the knowledge that is the link to ourselves.

My contact at the InfoGroup said I could call him on Monday, and after reading your encouraging post, I plan on it. Mike said he would help me with this issue, and I'd really like to know what UofM said to him. I'm not above starting an online petition, if that's what's necessary. I'm beginning to think it might take something like that to let them know it is indeed a big deal to many of us. I'll report back on this.

Again, thanks to you, Al, and to all those who care about not only saving our history, but our ability to access it, too.

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Originally Posted by kathy2trips

Those of you who have used this valuable historical resource from the University of Michigan Digital Library over the last several years may have noticed that quite suddenly, it is no longer available online. :confused:

Even when registering with a user name and password, the library will deny online access to this particular publication. When inquiring, I got an email reply stating: "As the rights are unclear, it is available for in-library use only."

So, I contacted the InfoGroup out of Omaha, NB who purchased R.L. Polk about 15 years ago. My contact there told me that the rights and permissions expire after 75 years, so there are no legal obstacles to once again, posting it online.

For us amateur historians, architectural buffs and family tree researchers, it is important that this resource remain free online as a public service as it was previously.

The 1928-29 directory is a pre-Depression, pre-Expressway look at Detroit when most of our ancestors had already arrived here. One example of how this directory has been helpful can be seen in this old thread regarding a second-empire house, House Next to Senate Antiques Torn Down: [[http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...City+Directory)

If you can find great-grandma's old house in the directory, you won't have to wade through the scads of pages in the 1940 Census, which has just been made available online through the government. It's not searchable by name, only address. So, you could just look up the name in the Polk, find the address, and plug that in the census search. Instant success!

I've asked the InfoGroup to contact the library directly to assure them there would be no legal problems to re-posting the directory online. However, a word from you, members of DetroitYes, would go a long way in showing the U of M what an important resource this is to us. ;)

Kindly email them and ask that the R.L. Polk Detroit City Directory 1928-29 be restored to its former status free online:

Digital Library Production Service
300 Hatcher North
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1205
Ph: 734-647-8000
Fax: 734-647-6897
Email: dlps-support@umich.edu

Thank you SO MUCH for all your help! Hopefully, we can get the directory back online again soon.

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Thankyou for all your info Kathy, will do

A searchable Polk's Detroit City Directory 1928-1929, along with other great resources, is online on Don's List:

http://www.donslist.net/PGHLookups/Detroit1928CDM.htm

THANK YOU CRYSTAL! You are a friggin' research genius!

For user's reference:
the General Index is on page 0007.
the Abbreviation Key is on page 0397
the Name Directory starts on page 0398
the Street & Avenue Guide & Directory of Householders starts on page 2197

I notice at the top it states "courtesy of UMichLib". Hoping they don't make Don's List take it down. Actually, they have no standing since the publication is in public domain. I wonder if there was a way I could download this for myself? I don't want to go through this again. At this point, I don't trust anyone. :rolleyes:

Thanks again to Crystal, Al and the rest of group who contributed to this thread.

You're welcome, kathy2trips. I have used the 1928-29 directory many times and was sad [[ok, maybe even a little distressed) to learn U-M had withdrawn it from online use.

I don't have a subscription to ancestry.com, but a little while ago I found that I can browse and search [[from my home) the US Census, including 1940, by following links from my local library card.

After screaming incoherently for weeks on end regarding both the removal of the U of M Burton collection as well as the Polk 1928 guide I suppose I can take slight solace from the fact that I am not alone. In addition to regular research of Detroit history as a hobby, I also post historical images and postcards on the FB page Buildings of Detroit. Not having either of the collections as reference options is very frustrating.

I first realized the Polk was down in the fall of last year if I recall correctly. I managed to work around it hoping it was temporary. The Burton collection had a splash page note that the collection was to be "Retired" on Dec 31, 2014 and all the images were to be available at DPL's digital collections site. I wrote to the contact person whom I expected to be a U of M library employee but in fact worked at DPL. His reply to my inquiry as to why the collection was to be retired and the fact that the images on the DPL page were vastly smaller in resolution is as follows:

Thank you for your feedback. Because the Detroit Public Library Digital Collections [[http://digitalcollections.detroitpubliclibrary.org/) includes all of the items [[and much more - over 67,000 images) from Early Detroit Images from the Burton Historical Collection, the decision was made not to maintain two separate sites.

The images on the DPL Digital Collections are actually at a higher resolution [[150 dpi jpeg versus 72 dpi jpeg) than those on Early Detroit.

Regards,

Mark Bowden

Coordinator for Special Collections
Burton Historical Collection
Detroit Public Library

I sent a reply indicating that his statement of higher resolution was simply not true, and provided three examples of the exact same image [[as the U of M site was still up) along with their corresponding highest display resolutions. The differences were dramatic with one on U of M being 2393x1920 and it's copy at DPL at 598x480.

I was stunned to say the least at his following rather curt reply:

The zoom feature is supported by our current platform. We are actively exploring other solutions that will meet the needs of our users.

When I inquired as to what he meant by "our current platform" and what they had in the works as a solution I never heard back from him. I can only assume that the platform he mentions is the in-house software that DPS utilizes. Which of course is completely useless to anyone who is a three hour drive from the closest DPL branch such as myself.

I hate to say it but it seems that it's just one more example of the folks at DPL not having much of a clue. I know there are many dedicated, hard working personnel in the DPL system but my own personal experiences with those I've interacted with over my 30 years living in the city was less than remarkable.

I am very grateful to both kathy2trips for the effort and information and Crystal for providing the workaround Polk link. I'll be contacting U of M today regarding the Polk guide. Squeaky wheel as they say....

It's good to know others are as frustrated as I in regard to not only these items but antiquarian research material in general being taken down that by all reason and rights should be freely available digitally.

It is in this light that I'd like to share the following list of my Detroit research bookmarks. I have not recently audited them so my apologies if any are 404 or redundant. Some are extremely helpful such as the 1921 street renumbering guide and Dau's Bluebook, others simply had a bit or two that I thought I might use sometime in the future. Happy researching!

Ebook and Texts Archive
INFOMINE: Scholarly Internet Resource
Michigan architect and engineer 1922
1879 Detroit City Directory
1899 Detroit business and professional directory
1920-1921 Detroit Renumbering Changes
1940 United States Federal Census
Albert Kahn: 400 Buildings in Metro Detroit
Annual Report - Detroit [[Mich). Controller's Office, Detroit [[Mich.). Office of the City Comptroller Book of Detroiters 1908
Burton Historical Collection
Chicago Art Inst. Photo Archives
Chronography of notable events in the history of the Northwest territory and Wayne County"
Cinema Treasures
CinemaTour - Cinema History Around the World
City of Detroit, 1701-1922 Vol I
City of Detroit, 1701-1922 Vol II
City of Detroit, 1701-1922 Vol III
City of Detroit, 1701-1922 Vol IV
City of Detroit, 1701-1922 Vol V
Database - SkyscraperPage.com
Detroit Address Changes and Polk Dirs
Detroit Blue Book
Detroit Historic Maps
Detroit History Resources - ReoCities
Detroit Movie Theatres
Detroit Publishing Company - LOC
Detroit SAIC Digital Libraries
Detroit Street Nmaesakes
Detroit Streets
Detroit, MI - Bing Maps
Detroti and MI Genealogy
Discuss Detroit: Old Car Factories - 1
DTE Aerial Photo Collection
EMPORIS - Building data and construction projects worldwide
Free Family History and Genealogy Records — FamilySearch.org
HathiTrust - Buildings : a selection of representative construction work ...
HathiTrust Digital Library - Detroit, the city beautiful.
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey - About this Collection - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog [[Library of Congress)
Historic People in the Historic Boston Edison Neighborhood
History of Detroit: A Chronicle of Its Progress, Its Industries, Its ... : Paul Leake : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
http://www.mel.org/index.php?P=SPT--...y&ParentId=839
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
League of Historic American Theaters
Michigan Architect and Engineer 1918
Michigan eLibrary
Michigan eLibrary - Link to Heritage Quest
Michigan Tourism Theaters Auto Racing Motels Lakes Resorts Drive In Theaters Cinemas Amusement Parks Travel Photos Weather
New HABS Site
Open Library Detroit eBook Listing
Packard. no.1-18 [[1910-11). - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library
Panorama of old Detroit - Main Page
Place|Promo Polk's Detroit city directory.
The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922 - Google Books
The Department Store Museum: The J. L. Hudson Co., Detroit, Michigan
The Detroit News Archivist
The Making of Modern Michigan - "Digitizing Michigan's Hidden Past"
The Moving picture world - Moving Picture Exhibitors' Association - Google Books
Wayne County Historical Directories
WSU Virtual Motor City Collection [[Detroit News): Home
www.historictheatres.org

Krawlspace, thank you so much for your great bookmarks, which I'll nab and bookmark.

I received the following e-mail on Thursday from an unnamed person at UofM that I'd like to share with you, the membership of DetroitYes.

I'll post it without comment except to say that the Mike Altman mentioned is my contact at InfoGroup. I really appreciate his going to bat for us. If you'd like to drop him a line and thank him also, his e-mail address is mike.altman@infogroup.com.
Don't forget to mention you're a member of DetroitYes!

Thanks to all of you for all your contribution to the thread, including Krawlspace's recent post of all the great links. Here's the e-mail from the UofM:
****************************************
Workspace: DLPS Support
Ticket: Access Request-UM Digital Library

Description:

As I said, I shared your messages with our Copyright Office and talked to one of the attorneys there. Mike Altman's comments were of great interest to them, though they were confused by the mention of a 75 year copyright rule in relation to US copyright law. A handy table of durations that is useful to me as a non-lawyer can be found at

https://copyright.cornell.edu/resour...blicdomain.cfm

Since this directory was published after 1923 and has a copyright notice, this would require renewal research, which can be complicated for serials and so we are erring on the side of caution in these litigious times. Nonetheless, the attorney suggests that this could be defended as a fair use and will allow it to be reopened. However, it cannot be opened in HathiTrust as the rights options there are quite defined -- in the public domain [[US and world), in copyright, with permission, unclear [[and thus not available). We will, however, be contacting Mike Altman for permission and should he grant it, this will also be available in HathiTrust after this site is migrated.

It is often hard to understand gaps in HathiTrust. In some cases, it is because publishers did not allow Google to scan their works for Google Books [[speaking of litigation). In others, it is because the material was not suitable for high-volume scanning due to size or condition. And finally, it all depends on what the partner libraries hold and what they allowed to be scanned. I have been talking to one of our outreach librarians who is interested in looking at this issue, but I'm not sure what the result will be.

I'm sorry you find this all so frustrating -- I certainly do as well. We try to make as much material available to as many people as possible while serving our campus constituency, but we also don't want to violate anyone's copyrights.

Looks like U of M has put the 1928 Directory back online! I had to delete Firefox from my computer temporarily and use IE. I clicked on my old favorites links, where I'd bookmarked the major streets...and they worked. Looks like I owe a thank you to U of M and to Mike Altman, too. And to you, my fellow DetroitYes researchers. Mission accomplished!

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Originally Posted by kathy2trips

Looks like U of M has put the 1928 Directory back online! I had to delete Firefox from my computer temporarily and use IE. I clicked on my old favorites links, where I'd bookmarked the major streets...and they worked. Looks like I owe a thank you to U of M and to Mike Altman, too. And to you, my fellow DetroitYes researchers. Mission accomplished!

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If you could add a link to the database please..

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text...S8107.1928.001

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Originally Posted by Mikeg

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text...S8107.1928.001

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Thank you, Mike!

For those not familiar with 'City Directories', they are amazing! I learned SO much about my grandfathers in the City Directories that I would never have found out otherwise, like that my mother's father worked for Edward Gray, Henry Ford's chief engineer at Highland Park first at Riverside Engine in Oil City [[1906 Directory) before Gray also came to Detroit- and I thought he worked for Ford when he actually worked for Edward Gray directly [[1912 Directory) and so on, that my other grandfather was a chauffeur- and was Charles Gauss' chauffeur- a millionaire wholesale tobacconist that paid for the building of Trinity Lutheran Church- crazy stuff! Hopefully access is returned- and be sure to check out your relatives in those directories! Attachment 27104
Attachment 27105
Attachment 27106

Family Search has the 1940 Census. Seeking Michigan has updated the online death records, you can now view certificates up to 1939, and records from 1940-1952 are indexed. Finally, if you haven't been on Ancestry.com for a while, it's worth a trip to the library or a short term membership as they have added marriage and divorce records! It's been an exciting few months for my Detroit Genealogy research. :)

Wow, Lgerg! Thanks for that tip! I had wondered whatever became of Edward Gray, Henry Ford's Chief Engineer. He's the one that developed 'Grayhaven', where Gar Wood lived yet when he died he was living in Grosse Pointe, 1320 Berkshire. Found his death certificate in no time on that 'Seeking Michigan' site, in 1939. Interesting... In the beginning he was living on his yacht at the foot of Continental while developing 'Grayhaven'.

Ralph L. Polk, he of the R.L.Polk publishing company, resided in W. Boomfield on Long Lake road back on the 1940 census. Bunch of servants, needless to say.