Folks: The following letter is from Brian Leverich, founder of RootsWeb. It announces new facilities at RootsWeb to complement the USGenWeb county home pages. Many of us have been using resources at RootsWeb: county pages located on the RootsWeb servers, GenConnect boards to gather queries or as supplements to another query system. Mailing lists for over 1/2 the Alabama counties have been created and have been active at RootsWeb -- some for several years. Now -- RootsWeb will be creating a mailing list and GenConnect boards for every county. You, as County Coordinator, will be given the first opportunity to adminster any new RootsWeb resources. If, however, there was already a county mailing list, the adminstration will remain as before. (You may or may not be the mailing list manager for an existing mailing list. I am for 2 of my counties, but the mailing list for Calhoun County has another list manager, for example.) There will also be a web page for every county which points to *** ROOTSWEB-only *** resources for the county. So, this web page will point to mailing lists and GenConnect boards for the county. It will also point to the USGenWeb site for the county -- IF THAT PAGE IS ON ROOTSWEB. (If a county site exists on RootsWeb for another genealogical project such as ALHN, the RootsWeb page will (also?) point to that location.) It will have search boxes to search the most common databases on RootsWeb such as Surname Helper, GenSeeker, RootsLink, mailing list archives, etc. These "county cluster" resources are not a replacement for the USGenWeb county pages. There is no intention to provide the type of information that USGenWeb provides such as addresses of libraries, addresses of court houses, locations of cemeteries, etc. It will not provide assistance in locating reference material for the county. It will simply provide a single point of entry to ROOTSWEB resources. Even if your county page is hosted on another server, it would be helpful to researchers visiting your page if you were to add a link to the cluster page for your county. If you want to administer the mailing lists and GenConnect boards for your county, you need to speak up now. -- Contact me and I'll forward to RootsWeb -- Feel free to discuss here if you have questions. Regards, Leigh >Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 21:14:13 -0700 >From: "Dr. Brian Leverich" <leverich@rootsweb.com> >Subject: Improving Our Ability to Serve the Public > >One of the things about life is you either keep improving or you >become a corpse standing on your feet. > >That's true for RootsWeb, and it's equally true for USGenWeb. Since >USGenWeb was founded, many other organizations have sprung up that >partially or wholly attempt to clone USGenWeb's content: ALHN, >GenExchange, Broderbund's GenForum, Ancestry, Randall Haight's >genweb.net, ... > >If USGenWeb is going to stay the premier geographically-oriented >genealogy project, one of the things it's going to need to do is >continuously improve the range and quality of services it provides >to the genealogical community. > >In tonight's RootsWeb Review, RootsWeb is announcing "County >Resource" pages for every county in America. The pages include or >will include links to USGenWeb sites on RootsWeb, a mailing list, a >GenConnect suite, a link registry, search engines for the USGenWeb >Archives and the RSL, an event calendar, a guestbook, and various >other tools. > >You can see the County Resources at: > http://resources.rootsweb.com/USA/ > >We expect to be adding tools to the Resource pages as rapidly as we >can. There will surely be a Social Security Death Index search and >some other nice features coming on line in the not-to-distant future. > > ### > >So isn't this just another competitor for USGenWeb? > > ==> Not at all. <== > >While we're still working out the details, RootsWeb's intent is to >put each County Resource page and all the resources on them at the >disposal of the appropriate USGenWeb County Coordinator. CCs can >link to the pages, or they can borrow the HTML from the pages and >incorporate the tools directly into their own pages. How (or even >if) you administer those resources is largely your own choice. > >That's your own choice. The tools are there if you want them. And >there will be more and better tools available to you as time goes on. > >Speaking personally, I hope most folks choose to use the tools. >USGenWeb is one of the two most impressive projects I've ever seen >unfold on the Internet (the development of Linux is the other ... ), >and I would very much like to see USGenWeb stay on the cutting edge >of technology and provide better services to genealogists than any >of its imitators. Cheers, B. > > >-- >Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L >RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ >P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 leverich@rootsweb.com > > >