I just sent the following to my lists. I thought I would send it along here, too, in case any of you missed the news. >From Ancestry's Daily News: IN THE NEWS ONLINE: USENET ARCHIVES BACK ONLINE =============================================== The search engine Google.com (http://groups.google.com/) has reposted over 650 million messages posted to Usenet dating back to the mid- 1990s. For more information, see: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/9320.html You didn't miss them while they were gone, you say? Well, then, you have been missing out on a LOT of fascinating genealogy material. When the Internet was in its infancy, before the birth of the World Wide Web even, there was Usenet. These days, sadly, many ISPs don't even run a news server, and many folks have only accessed the Usenet newsgroups via Deja, or through the gatewayed/mirrored Rootsweb lists. Unfortunately, the auto-moderator for the Surnames lists has been broken for a long time, and is not yet fixed, so the list method of access was closed, and since Deja was sold to Google.com, there wasn't even any web access left. [Of course, you can still search the list Archives here at Rootsweb, http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl?list=SURNAMES-L ] But that has all changed, and you can now search all of Usenet, or only selected parts, with the wonderful Google search engine. Try it, you'll like it! It might even inspire you to fire up your news reader, and access Usenet directly. It's a wild and wooley, anarchic and wonderful place! --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.251 / Virus Database: 124 - Release Date: 4/27/01