Oops, running a little late today, never-the-less, welcome back to Jean Reynolds, and to Stewart Gillies who have rejoined this week. If you haven't already contributed, we hope to hear from you soon. ****** ****** ****** If you're thinking of having a truly merry time this Hogmanay, then don't drive, we'd like to have you back next year; and may your new year's resolutions be the kind that either come to fruition or don't matter if they are broken. ****** ****** ****** With Christmas over, and New Year fast approaching, this short article (previously published in RootsWeb Review, 9 Oct 2002) "Buried Treasures at RootsWeb: Mining the Mailing Lists Archives" - will, I hope, provide some holiday reading ... ------------------------------------------------------------ "The RootsWeb Mailing Lists archives contain the content of years of discussion that have been carried on among researchers of the subject matter of these various Mailing Lists. Thus buried in these archives could be some treasures that might benefit you in your quest to learn more about your ancestors. Someone at another time -- perhaps years ago -- might have posted just the information you seek today. Because the Mailing Lists archives' content is not included in the metasearch results when you type in a surname on the main RootsWeb page, a specialized search to find the treasures in the Mailing Lists archives must be conducted. Such searches may result in finding some sparkling gems pertaining to your genealogy that you will not discover elsewhere. The archives of the individual Mailing Lists are both browseable and searchable from two separate RootsWeb archives. Most Mailing Lists at RootsWeb are archived. The Threaded (browseable) Archives is at: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/ and the Interactive Search (searchable archives) is located here: http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl Both of these links -- Interactive Search and Threaded Archives can also be found under the Mailing List section on RootsWeb's Home Page: http://www.rootsweb.com/ In the Threaded Archives, responses to an original message are displayed attached to the message to which they are replying in an outline format with responses indented from the original message. Thus you can follow an entire subject of discussion by tracing through a thread of messages in the archives. Browsing the Threaded Archives also benefits new Mailing List subscribers who may want to get a feel for the list before posting to it or wish to check out whether their ancestors have previously been discussed. It also aids current Mailing List members by enabling them to check messages they might have missed while on vacation, during e-mail delivery problems, or because of a computer crash. Starting at the Threaded Archives http://archiver.rootsweb.com/ type in the Mailing List name of your choice to access an index page showing each month and year included in that particular list's archives. View an outline of the subjects of all messages posted to the Mailing List within a given month (including the poster's name and date posted, if desired) in either threaded (the default) or chronological order. Click on a subject of interest to view the full text of the message. The Interactive Search located here: http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl allows you to search a single Mailing List one year at a time by marking the appropriate radio button. (Radio buttons are round circles which represent choices within an list of options on a form.) Select a keyword, name, or phrase to obtain results matching your search criteria. The Interactive Search supports some Boolean operators (AND, OR, ANDNOT) to help you establish the most effective searches to suit your needs. Boolean expressions are used extensively by Internet search engines. By default, your searches will include every field in a message, but you may narrow down your results by specifying that you want your search to apply only to matches in a specific field. In the following examples all Boolean operators are shown in capital letters while all search criteria are shown lowercase. This is for explanatory purposes only -- as both are case insensitive. You may search for john OR smith by using the OR operator. You will obtain all messages containing either the word John or Smith. However, if you search on "john smith" or john+smith the results will only yield instances where the words John and Smith appear in that exact sequence. The use of quotes or a plus sign creates a complete phrase. Searching for john AND smith (using the AND operator), or john smith (with a single space separating John and Smith) will yield results where John and Smith appear somewhere in the message, but not necessarily side-by-side. The ANDNOT operator may also be used as follows: john ANDNOT smith which would yield all messages where the word John was found unless the message also included the word Smith. Grouping search criteria and the applicable operators within parentheses will permit more complex searches. For example, (sarah AND jones) OR (john AND smith) will yield results where Sarah AND Jones OR John AND Smith appear somewhere in a message but the words are not necessarily side-by-side. Searching on a specific message field, such as searching for all messages posted to a list by a specific poster during a year, is accomplished by typing in the search criteria: from/johndoe@anyisp.net Only the "from" field will be searched. If you are looking for a specific thread and you know the subject or partial subject you wish to locate, you may opt to search the "subject" field only, as follows: subject/"john smith in ohio" -- note that double quotation marks are used to tie the entire phrase together when you are searching for more than a single word. The phrase in quotation marks must match the subject, or a portion of the subject, exactly to return a hit. You may search for all messages posted on a given day without specifying a field but you must use quotation marks to tie the phrase together. For example: "02 may 2002" will get all messages posted on May 2, 2002 and "22 may 2002" will get all messages posted on May 22, 2002. Searching on "may 2002" will yield all messages posted within the month of May 2002, and searching on 2001 will result in getting all messages posted to the list for the entire year. Interactive list searches support trailing wildcards only (wildcards coming at the end of a word). Use an asterisk * to represent zero or more unknown or variable letters at the end of a word after you have specified a minimum of at least the first letter. Interactive list searches work on whole words and not strings of letters. In other words, if you search for john and a message includes johnson it won't come up in your results -- but if you search on john* it will. One benefit of the searches applying to words rather than strings of letters is that a search on sy will pick up the given name or surname Sy but will not yield words which include the string "sy" such as the word "easy". Exploring the Mailing Lists Threaded Archives and using the Interactive Search capabilities in creative ways may reward you with some previously buried genealogical treasures." ------------------------------------------------------------ See Musings #219 for ButeshireGenWeb-L direct access addresses to the Archives ****** ****** ****** Feel free to join in and present your own items. Peter Cook cookfmly@bigpond.com List maintainer and Co-host with Barbara < babrown12@optonline.net > of the ButeshireGenWeb mailing list.