A scanner would work great Mary. I use a digital camera. I take photo's of the original pages...upload them to the computer, names the files in page number order, then create a 'book' in pdf so it's readable by acrobat....that's my method. I'm sure there are many other ways. In this way I spend a few hours at the courthouse and a lot more at home doing things as I can get to them. I also get Works Progress Administration information when I can. I wish I were rich enough to have a microfilm scanner...one that scans the film into pdf files. Joyce Gaston Reece,President American Local History Network Join us in celebrating our 20th year! www.alhn.org -----Original Message----- From: Mary Saban Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 10:37 AM To: alhn-general@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ALHN-GENERAL] cemetery info on ALHN I am going to throw in my two cents on this one. I quit worrying about transcribing census a while back when a researcher reminded me that transcribers can make mistakes and that scans of the original documents were more valuable in proving a case. So on that point I agree with Sherry. Joyce has a great point about the wills etc in the courthouses. One of the problems has always been the time involved to sit in their sometimes dusty archives and write out a transcription. There are new hand held scanning wands that will scan an entire page and remotely transmit to your laptop. I want one of those. When I get one, I will be testing it out in the Midland County courthouse, and I am not even a coordinator for Midland County I do not know how the DAR is now, but when I joined about 12 or 13 years ago, each step had to be documented -- transcriptions of census were not acceptable, transcriptions of anything were not acceptable. Have a great weekend everyone! Mary WY CO -----Original Message----- From: Joyce Gaston Reece Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 8:02 AM To: alhn-general@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ALHN-GENERAL] cemetery info on ALHN Sherry, I agree with your statements to a point but here is my disagreement. I research in a region of counties....Hamilton, Bradley, Meigs, Knox, McMinn, Polk, Monroe, Blount, Roane in TN and have branched out into western North Carolina Counties of Haywood, Graham, Cherokee, Macon & Clay. In every last one of these counties is a myriad of information that isn't online and won't be online for many years to come. For instance, one of the best friends any researcher has is lower court records...that court where estate and other civil matters are heard....like wills and estates, property disputes, etc. These are the records that will blow the lid off many family searches that are at that so-called brick wall. Then there's the TONS of other court records like circuit and criminal. And as time goes on those records will become more valuable for researchers of the future. Deeds - abstracted deeds can also help establish family relationships. In 1830, ie, if grandpa John, at 20 years, lived near or next door to the Smith's and Grandpa John married Jane Smith at the age of 22 then you can be 90% sure that the Jane Smith grandpa John married was that dtr of the next door neighbor. This situation is a very good clue. So putting things like court indices, deed abstracts or indices and all this type data on a local or state web site can be extremely helpful. My point is that there is way too much data still lying around in archives, court house basements, libraries etc that isn't online. We just have to be creative enough to figure out how we, as volunteers can get that data and get it online. One thing Sharon and I did was use volunteers. There are those out there who have time to transcribe but don't wish to create web sites. We had one volunteer who printed microfilmed copies of interest, many concerning death notices. He went to the libraries and went thru quite a few microfilmed newspapers. As a result we had volunteers who have indexed the names, close to 1500, and put those names online. Once someone sees a name they want they can contact the Monroe Co. Archives for a copy of the article. We did the same with the circuit court records. We learned what the movements were within the Chancery Court and posted that information online so people would know where to look for the records they might want. There's many, many ways we can offer more and new information on our web sites. Sometimes it may be just a matter of making a phone call to the county you're doing and establishing a relationship or two. Learning what's available and creating ways to work with who and what's 'out there'. Joyce Gaston Reece,President American Local History Network Join us in celebrating our 20th year! www.alhn.org -----Original Message----- From: SherryeW@aol.com Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 12:04 AM To: alhn-general@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ALHN-GENERAL] cemetery info on ALHN This is one of the reasons I feel that ALHN is not as active anymore. It is hard to get great data to put on a small website that makes genealogists want to use it again and again. Census is already done by several other sites, and there are a few large cemetery websites. LDS has vital records online. I feel that putting up cemetery info on the ALHN isn't helpful to genealogists anymore. If you want to get it out to the public, it needs to go on to Find-A-Grave (or similar sites). It would be wonderful, Jim, if you would add your 30 cemeteries to that website. I think you will find that a lot of your info is already on Find-A-Grave and would be duplicated on your ALHN webpage. Most genealogists want to shop for their info in as few places as possible, and don't want to have to visit many little sites like they used to. I know I don't. If ALHN concentrated on unpublished and hard to find data on their websites it might help. But I feel that cemetery info should be added to one large free database for all to use. There could be a link to Find-A-Grave on the ALHN websites with a list of which cemeteries that ALHN website has added. And each gravesite could show the submitters name and ALHN affiliation. Just my humble opinion :) Sherrye In a message dated 11/14/2013 1:22:31 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, jpowelljr@gru.net writes: Lastly, like I said there is so much here to do, I have about 30 cemeteries that we have photographed that I need to edit, build databases for and deploy for Volunteers to add the info from the stones. We are still fighting to get something into the legislature that separates Ancient Records from Modern day Court Files. Our Local Representative is into history and says he supports us, but can he pull off something in Tallahassee. We will see. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ALHN-GENERAL-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ALHN-GENERAL-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ALHN-GENERAL-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message