Friday, October 31, 2008

Finding old donor numbers

For any parent who is trying to remember the donor number, if your child was conceived AFTER 1997-1998, use the Internet Archive to locate the donor catalogue/lists at that time.  Simple go to the IA's Wayback Machine (link above), type in the sperm bank's website: for example www.xytex.com, and click "Take Me Back."  The Internet Archive will give you a list of every time the Wayback Machine took a snapshot of the website over the past decade.  Most major sperm bank's had websites by 1998, so after that it should be fairly easy to access the catalogue or a list from that time. 

Here's some examples:


Please let me know if you need any help using this resource.  There are of course several obvious problems...anyone conceived before the Internet Age is out of luck (~pre-1997), and if a sperm bank's domain name has changed it may be more difficult to find their archives.

For anyone conceived from Xytex in the mid-to-late 1980s (and even potentially the early 1990s), I have FINALLY posted the list of donors from 1983-1984 I received from Xytex back in 2005 in an Excel file under the new section I just created "Old Donor Lists".  Please feel free to check it out.  Donors numbers that are in bold type have either the donor or offspring listed on a registry.  If you think you may have been conceived from Xytex around this time and a bolded donor looks like a possible match I can put you in contact with that individual; or if know you were conceived from Xytex and would like to add your information, please email me.  Not all donor numbers from that time are listed, so again, if you're a Xytex Baby from the 80s and would like to be added please let me know!

Also, if anyone has donor lists from anytime or any sperm bank - preferably those lists from before 1997, and would like to donate them (no pun intended) to my blog for others to access, please email me!!  I'm slowly uploading these lists I have in PDFs to spreadsheets in Google Docs and publishing them, so please be patient!

No comments: