Surname Resources at RootsWeb On 8 June 1999, I mentioned the "new look" at RootsWeb and outlined the features of the "clusters" that can be reached from the "Surname Resources at RootsWeb" page http://resources.rootsweb.com/surnames/ . For any of the available surnames that you select, you will be directed to links to a collection of resources, namely; Personal WebSites, Projects, Transcriptions, Primary Records, General Links, Mailing Lists, GenConnect, Guestbook, and Calendar. You can go to the BLANCHARD resource page directly at: http://resources.rootsweb.com/surnames/b/l/BLANCHARD/ to investigate any or all of these. With little or no input from Listowners, RW has set up a site for "one stop genealogy shopping" on the Web. I mentioned briefly that RW used the surnames posted to the RootsWeb Surname List (RSL) as the basis for generating several thousand new surname clusters to add to those that they formed for surnames, like BLANCHARD, that had already established Mail Lists, Web Pages, or suites of GenConnect Boards at RootsWeb. The only variant surnames of even remote interest to us are BLANCH and BLANSHAR, but the variant names that I requested and are still shown on our original GenConnect Boards; BLANCARD, BLANCHER, BLANSHARD, etc. were not added. At the time that I posted a proposal for how the 'variant' surnames might be handled, to the Listowners-L List, that list was being moderated and the moderator chose not to distribute the message which was judged inappropriate for the List. It was suggested that I post it to the CIRB (Cluster Issue Resolution Board) List which I did. Tim Pierce, responding for RootsWeb, rejected the proposal. No other Listowner has posted any comments about the proposal or Tim's response. Accordingly, here is the position that BLANCHARD-L has taken. Since BLANCH and BLANSHAN are not known variants of the BLANCHARD surname, we will not request to 'adopt' these clusters. (As of today, no messages have been posted to these sites, other than the welcome message from RW.) We will not request new clusters for the known variant surnames of BLANCHARD since there is no method for having these sites serve only to direct persons to the corresponding sites for BLANCHARD resources at RootsWeb. This means that if someone else requests these variant surnames we will be unable to centralize the efforts of BLANCHARD (et al) researchers, even though RW has offered to provide links among related surname sites. Fletch