Hello everyone, it's your list monitor here. I wanted to let everyone know about changes I am currently making to the website (and for those who don't know about it, introduce you to the list). As most of you know, I maintain a site called "The Genealogy Depository" (see signature below) that acts as a supplement to the list. A lot of the material on the site has been submitted to me by list members or I have asked list members for permission to post data from an email to the pages if I felt it was relevant. For those of you who've been on the list since March 2004 or earlier, you know that I left my Rootsweb site back in April 2004 and now have my own domain, which I pay for out of my pocket. I graduated in May with my MA in Public History, concentration in Archival management, but due to the fact that I cannot find a job yet, I'm having a hard time scraping all the money for the site together. I'm not asking for money from anyone, please understand that. What I have done is to sign up with Google Adsense program, which in short means I put ads on my page and everytime someone clicks on one, I earn a percentage. Money I earn goes directly to help pay for the site. I've had ads up on the page for about 2-3 weeks now, fine tuning, etc. and earned $1.44 so far (yay!!). Also, there is a new search box, which works the same way, if you use that box to perform searches (including regular searches you would normally go to the google homepage for), the site earns a percentage of those as well. So far, the site hasn't earned anything from the search box, but it wasn't working properly before. I finally tweaked it so that search results will be displayed that includes specific pages on the site as well as the internet. So now, if you do a search for "Richard Bradford" it will return all pages on the Genealogy Depository AND on the www. This is an improvement over the old search box. That one only returned matches on the Depository and not the www. It took me a while to figure it out, but finally got it and it's up and running and I've tested it out, so feel free to use now. Both the ads and search box will be on the sister site, http://www.ncalhn.org. Ok, another thing I have done is also signed up for being an associate/affiliate for Heritage Quest, Willow Bend Books, and Amazon.com. If you see a book linked from my site, it will take you to one of these sites and as with the google ads, the money earned go towards paying for the site. The difference with google ads and associates of the bookstores is that with google you don't have to buy anything, you just follow the ad, but with the bookstores, nothing is earned until a person actually purchases an item. It doesn't have to be that item you clicked on though. Also, I know that ancestry.com has an affiliate program, but I have no plans at this time to get that because the Genealogy Depository is FREE and will stay that way. There are too many sites out there that say something like, follow this link to see a ship list or something and then it takes you to ancestry and you have to sign up and pay for it. I HATE that! I will not do that to you guys. IF I ever do go with ancestry, it would only be to take you to their books, like with Heritage Quest, etc. Lastly, I know that some of you will have a problem with not only the ads on the website, but for me getting money for them. I am sorry if you have a problem, but it's really the only way I can keep the site going. It's just a way for the site to basically pay for itself. I know when I first signed up with Amazon 5 years ago and informed the lists about it, I got some very angry responses to it. I just can't please everyone, so I'm sorry if you're upset about the changes. Ok, this is long enough, so I'll sign off now. Please continue to submit information for inclusion on the website. Remember, I can't do dig up a lot of this info, about 90% is submitted from others. You maintain the copyright to the material (at least the portion that is copyrightable), and I do give credit where credit is due, in other words, if you submit information, I will say that, I will not claim it as my own. Good luck everyone with your research. Erin Bradford eabradfo@yahoo.com http://www.gendepository.com (The Genealogy Depository) List monitor: Barringer, Black, Bradford, Coventry, Eller, Hackett, Hupp, Kern