One advantage of using a service like the one the Victorian Museum is developing is that the Victorian Museum is an organisation that stands a good chance of still being around in 100 years time. Certainly it is more likely to be around than a site run by individuals as Australian Cemeteries is. This is not intended as a criticism of those involved in the Australian Cemeteries site. My husband and I run a cemetery site ourselves http://www.chapelhill.homeip.net/FamilyHistory/Photos/ which is why I am acutely aware of this issue of long-term operation. While I hope we are around and running our site for a good many years yet, I am thinking that we need to have a strategy to allow our work to live on if/when we are unable to continue to operate our site. Certainly I would seriously consider migrating our content to a state or national institution if I had the opportunity, if only as a backup. As for the argument about fragmenting the information, I can't see that the information is currently in one place anyway. There are many web sites out there with headstone photos, including http://austcemindex.com/ http://www.ozcemeteries.com/ etc along with many council WWW sites etc make it quite unlikely that it would all migrate onto a single WWW site run by individuals. I think it might be possible to integrate the information into a single site if an organisation with long-term resourcing (such as a national or state library/archive/museum) stepped forward and offered to do so. And I think that probably would be the best thing in the long run. Similar comments apply to people's individual research. From time to time people ask the question: what should I do with my research when I'm gone as my children aren't interested (or don't have children). It would be nice to think there was a standard way to preserve the results of so much work. At the moment WorldConnect would probably be your best option but that depends on a private company these days (Ancestry). Will they be around in the long term? This is 2010. Think about 2100. Kerry

Kerry, while your comments are all quite valid for someone who has not planned for the future (maybe your own website falls into this category), when the Australian Cemeteries site was in it's infancy we had a 'business plan' like any project should and of course this includes a contingency (back up) plan. Now I don't feel I need to justify anything to you Kerry but I can assure you the web site is in good hands and will be around for many more generations. Robynne, Raymond & Peter -----Original Message----- From: Kerry Raymond Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2010 5:15 PM To: australia-cemeteries@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES] Local History Grants Program One advantage of using a service like the one the Victorian Museum is developing is that the Victorian Museum is an organisation that stands a good chance of still being around in 100 years time. Certainly it is more likely to be around than a site run by individuals as Australian Cemeteries is. This is not intended as a criticism of those involved in the Australian Cemeteries site. My husband and I run a cemetery site ourselves http://www.chapelhill.homeip.net/FamilyHistory/Photos/ which is why I am acutely aware of this issue of long-term operation. While I hope we are around and running our site for a good many years yet, I am thinking that we need to have a strategy to allow our work to live on if/when we are unable to continue to operate our site. Certainly I would seriously consider migrating our content to a state or national institution if I had the opportunity, if only as a backup. As for the argument about fragmenting the information, I can't see that the information is currently in one place anyway. There are many web sites out there with headstone photos, including http://austcemindex.com/ http://www.ozcemeteries.com/ etc along with many council WWW sites etc make it quite unlikely that it would all migrate onto a single WWW site run by individuals. I think it might be possible to integrate the information into a single site if an organisation with long-term resourcing (such as a national or state library/archive/museum) stepped forward and offered to do so. And I think that probably would be the best thing in the long run. Similar comments apply to people's individual research. From time to time people ask the question: what should I do with my research when I'm gone as my children aren't interested (or don't have children). It would be nice to think there was a standard way to preserve the results of so much work. At the moment WorldConnect would probably be your best option but that depends on a private company these days (Ancestry). Will they be around in the long term? This is 2010. Think about 2100. Kerry ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message