American-Canadian Genealogical Society of NH, Inc.
Resource Use Policy – Effective 1 January 2021
Our Society spends from $15,000 to $20,000 per year on our Website Support, Computer Expenses & Maintenance, and Subscriptions to various Genealogical Programs to help our Members do their research at the Research Library at our Headquarters in Manchester, NH, and on our Members Only Portal on the Website. All but one of these Online Products are paid for on an annual basis. The exception is PRDH (Programme de recherche en démographie historique) developed by the Université de Montréal, and used in conjuction with Généalogie Québec’s La France Data base.
We pay for PRDH by the number of “Hits” that we purchase. A “Hit” means that every time someone clicks on the PRDH link on the LaFrance Summary Page, we get charged per each “Hit”. On July 1, 2020, we purchased 10,000 “Hits” for use on both our Website, and in our Research Library. By the third week in October, about 90+/- days), our 10,000 units were completely used up, and the program shut down until we buy more “Hits”. Each “Hit” costs us five cents Canadian, or roughly four cents US.
A review of where the usage emanated disclosed some distressful information, since about 4,000 “Hits” were used at our Research Library, which is only opened 2 days per week for 7 hours per day. Our entry logs indicate that fewer than six people per day were in attendance, yet an average of 445 “Hits” were used in 14 hours per week. That is over 30 “Hits” per hour that we were used.
The other area of large usage was on our Members Only Website Portal, where about 5,700 “Hits” were used. Besides our Website, two unidentified IP Addresses accessed our PRDH resources. We are in the process of identifying who owns these IP Addresses, and will institute a Denied Access order on them.
It is clear to your Board of Directors that we are experiencing abuse of this PRDH resource. Perhaps it is involuntary because some users may not be aware that every time they click on a PRDH link, and return to the same document, more “Hits” are used up. Moreover, if you click on a link within a PRDH document in order to expand a Family File, another “Hit” is used up. In some cases, it is possible to use up four or five “Hits” per document.
The Board will most likely authorize the purchase of additional PRDH “Hits” at its December 20th meeting. We will closely monitor usage at the Research Library, and on the Members Only Website Portal, while also investigating any “pirating” of our login and password. We realize that this resource contains very valuable information, and we want to continue offering it to our membership.
Please do your part in limiting excessive hunting and clicking on PRDH links. Otherwise, we will be forced to maintain a quarterly limit on “Hits”, and when they are totally used, no more will be purchased until the next quarter.
Thank you for your understanding, and for being a member of our Society.
