For archives
For archives and libraries: who calls you, how often, and how to opt out.
Draft for review. Rex has not approved this page yet, and it may change before the API launches.
Last updated November 1, 2026
Who runs Lineage
Lineage API is built and run by Rex St. John. It helps people research family records about people who have died, and it sends them back to the archive that holds each record.
How we identify ourselves
Every request Lineage makes to a source sends this User-Agent:
LineageAPI/0.1 (+https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com)
What Lineage requests today
Lineage does not fetch records from any archive yet. The only automated requests are a health check:
- One GET request to one page or keyless API call per source, chosen when the source was reviewed.
- The result is cached for 24 hours, so each source gets at most one check a day from each Vercel region that serves the site.
- The request gives up after 6 seconds. The response body is discarded without being read.
- Sources still under review, and sources reached only by letter, are never checked.
- Each source's terms, rate limits and robots.txt were read by hand when it was added. Where robots.txt disallows the obvious page, as on catalog.archives.gov, the check reads an allowed page instead. The code does not read robots.txt on each request.
Each source's stated rate limit is recorded in the registry. Per-source rate limits for record fetches are planned and will ship with search. They are not built yet.
Contact requests
Some archives only answer by mail or email. Lineage will draft a letter for a person to review and send themselves. Lineage never sends mail and never pays fees. Contact requests are not built yet. When they are, these rules are planned:
- A weekly cap on drafts per archive, across all users. Planned.
- An archive that opts out gets no drafts. Planned.
- A draft is only made to an address confirmed on the archive's own site. Planned.
- Every letter says how the requester found the archive. Planned.
- No drafts about living people, by the same rule that blocks research.
How to opt out
Write to [placeholder: contact address not set yet] from an address at your institution, and say which of these you want:
- Stop the daily health check.
- Remove your source from the catalog.
- Receive no contact request drafts once they exist.
- Correct how your source is described, including your terms or rate limits.
Opt-outs are handled by hand today: we change the registry and redeploy. An opt-out flag for contact requests is planned.