Joe Everett is the Family History, Local History, and Microforms Librarian at the Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library. He has over 25 years combined experience in the genealogical field at BYU, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, and Ancestry.com.

Joe manages the collections and patron services of the BYU Family History Library and serves as a faculty liaison to instructors in BYU's Family History undergraduate degree program and others involved in family history on campus from social to computer science.

At FamilySearch, Joe was a library program manager providing services for the more 5,000 family history centers. Previously at FamilySearch, he headed the International Reference floor at the Family History Library, and also worked for several years as a technical services librarian, cataloging Slavic and Germanic records. He has served on numerous strategic planning and program development teams at FamilySearch. At Ancestry.com, he worked in content acquisitions and content product and project management, putting genealogical databases online.

Joe earned a B.A. in Russian Language and in Family History/Genealogy (Germanic emphasis) from Brigham Young University and a Master of Library Science from Emporia State University (Kansas). He has been a member and officer in various library and genealogical associations and has lectured and published articles on U.S. and European family history research, historical geography, and migration.

18 February 2012

Save the Social Security Death Index

Genealogists! Only 3,666 have signed the petition to save the Social Security Death Index (SSDI).  (https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/take-steps-stop-fraudulent-tax-refund-claims-based-upon-identity-theft-recently-deceased-infants/SghL35V4)  Supporting this petition helps prevent fraud and it also helps family history. Privacy advocates are calling for the Social Security Death Master File to be restricted from public use, because it is potentially used by criminals for identify theft. A better solution is for the IRS to start actually using the Social Security Death Master file to filter out fraudulent tax filings. The same Social Security Death file is a very important resource for everyone seeking the family history in the United States. Locking it up would mean that generations of Americans would lose a vital link to their past. Help educate our elected lawmakers on this issue. Everyone agrees that identity theft and fraud must be prevented. The answer is not to lock up public information. The answer is to make proper use of that information. For more information, go to the FGS Records Preservation and Access Committee page http://www.fgs.org/rpac/.

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