Please stop asking us for obituaries

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Who wants to bet that whenever her PC said "You've got mail!" she went out to the street to check?



(payments accepted in cash only, small unmarked bills)

I would not be surprised in the least, especially if she's got AOL and the mailbox icon.

[PepperElf]

Why is she requesting so many obituaries? Unless she's somehow related to all of these people and compiling an extensive genealogy, I can't think of a single reason why she'd want or need them.

I'm wondering if she's trying to take advantage of them.

say... offering "services" or trying to see if they have rental agreements she can take over etc.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

Maybe FC and all her cousins could pool their money and get a subscription to Ancestry.com??? ...nah, that would make too much sense, and they would have fewer people to bother (since most people on there would just tell them to fuck off).

[depechemodefan]

She (and her cousin ) also mail copies of things they printed out with the death info. They are not from Ancestry.com

With our library, we have a subscription with Ancestry.com, but it has to be used in the library.

One person she requested an obit for only have month and year of death. We only accept full date, since we are not looking for a whole month. So of course she sends in a request for that person before . Ancestry gave us the same info (month and year) so I guess she is going to blow a gasket when I write to her, "we only can look with a complete date. If you want us to look for the whole month, you will have to pay the hourly rate, which is $100/her"

[Amadan]

Perhaps I'm just a sick and twisted puppy but,

For the ones she has been told repeatedly don't exist, why not make some up. Bonus points for the most creative!

Sorry - I'll get back to work now.

[depechemodefan]

For the ones she has been told repeatedly don't exist, why not make some up. Bonus points for the most creative!

She requests a copy, or else we would have made up stuff like, "we found X was survived by his big game hunting partner, Raul (no last name) and Mrs. X, who requests in lieu of flowers please donate to PAP (people against PETA).

[csquared]

Two part suggestion for you.

1. Keep a file for her. I know you send that you track the requests. You did not say how or what you have. When you find an obit for her, put a copy in her file. When she makes a request, check the file first. Might save some time.

2. Create an "official" looking form for the obits that you can't locate. I am assuming that you are just telling her that you could not find it. Send her the form. That way, she has something. It could be that she can't find an obit in her collection and is asking for it, forgetting that she had already asked for it. Also keep as copy of the form in the file for her. That way you don't waste time looking again for an obit that does not exist (assuming that you don't already have that info in your records).

[MystyGlyttyr]

This immediately drew my attention, so just let me go ahead and tell you.

People are fucking NUTS over their obits. I had a woman call into the paper screaming at us once because there were only three obituaries in the paper one day. (Seriously, that story's on here somewhere, I just can't find it atm.) People call my little Texas newspaper from all over the world looking for obits, and they don't seem to grasp that if they tell me "Well, her last name is Jones, and she died some time in 1987" that I really can't do anything with that.

Short version: I feel your pain. (But I got away lucky, as we DID charge money to do the looking, heh.)

[KatherineB]

As a person who is involved in requests of another sort (architectural plans for houses) may I suggest that this file you are sensibly going to create for this family includes a list of the time it takes you to do all of the searches, including all of the duplicate ones, making sure you do a check per individual name rather than by an entire family. Phone around to other papers and get quotes for how much they charge for their search fees (fees for looking, not just for copies of obits). Put together a table that shows exactly how much you are losing by not charging non-refundable fees for this process. I find that when managers, etc see specific dollars signs, they are far more eager to apply fees to such processes.

Clearly this won't help you individually because you aren't like to get a commission for each search, but, presuming they keep searching at least you can feel like the work you are doing is bringing in some money, and also managers are more likely to ensure you finish searches rather than being taken away to do something 'more important'. (Note that I'm not sure this is happening to you, but it was certainly something we went through and once it was pointed out to our otherwise brainless manager that the work we were doing was high enough priority due to the money coming in for it, he stopped nagging us to do 'more important' things.)

[Merriweather]

That's not always feasible for the researcher. My mom and dad are both researching their families. Starting with my mom's maternal grandfather, and records she needs to get are in Scotland, others on her mother's side are in England and Wales. Not really realistic for her to jet over there. With my grandfather's side, they're all over the place in the Mid-West and the South. Again, not financially feasible for her to go to all of these places.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean in any way to imply it was wrong to do the research by contacting sources out of one's local area (my sister would be in seventh heaven if she could actually travel to research the European ancestors).

In fact, nothing wrong with getting some help locally when needed as well. I was actually just thinking of the OP's situation, where someone seems determined to push the system to the limit, and get all the info they can without putting in effort to do what research they can themselves.

Again, sorry I wasn't totally clear on that.

[RealUnimportant]

not everyone has a family member buy an obituary in the newspaper

This, in spades - when my dad went, we didn't have an obituary because there's certain past acquaintances that we've very happily lost contact with! Hell, last time they got in touch it was because I was in a minor RTA at the corner of our road, & they tracked us down from that.

[depechemodefan]

Now she got another cousin requestiong material.

We do keep a file on her, with the name of each person, their date of death and if found, the citation. If not found, with the notation "NF" next to it.

Managers do keep stats. It's just getting the director of the library to take the info. to City Council to ask them to allows us to change the price, that is the tough thing. I don't know if the director cares, or the City Council cares, or there are bigger things going on to just shuffle this off.

Funny, City Council does need revenue, so they made 2 of the libraries points where people can get new passports. So we have to take people off the desk to run the application acceptance facility here-and we are really short on staff. The City gets $25 per application; since Sept. the City made $8,000 on this.

I guess since any fees we get for obit searches goes straight to the Library, City Council doesn't think it's priority.

[roguesqd]

charge $15 a piece for research time, should take care of her