>Hi all; >Things have been really going rapidly with the project. It is hard to believe that we have only been working on the majority of the project since the first of the year. I am so impressed with all the volunteers and donors for this project. They have been wonderful. > >We currently have Riverside and Madera counties online. We will momentarily have Book one of Butte County, Book one of San Bernardino County and all of San Diego County online. That will all occur this week. Steve has put contrasting colors on the county names that are online so they are easier to find. Just click on the county name and it will come up. The information is listed in the same order as in the death registers that we transcribe from. > >Several people have asked about what some of the status notes in the center column of the first page mean. Thought I would explain. > >Transcription Phase means we are currently transcribing those counties. We currently have more than 60 transcribers working on the project, so there are several counties in the process. I still have to admit that there are more working in Los Angeles County than any other because there are so many records for that county. We are anxious to get this online since so few online projects are available for the Los Angeles area. > >Records Available - Pending Funding means just that. We have received notification that we can get the records, but we need to acquire the funds to copy them. This is our largest expense for the project. > >Pending Funding alone means that we have ordered the files on a promise of funding from a person or organization and some we are hoping for funding before the records get here. These are ordered and in the process of being copied for us but we desperately need monies to cover these expenses. This is especially true of the San Francisco records as it is even larger than the Los Angeles County records. We need donations to help us get these copied. > >Pending Info on Availability means that we have not yet received word if we can get the records. You will notice there are fewer and fewer of these as you go to the website. Now we just need the funding to get copies once they are available. > >What we do when we are ready for a county, we order the files, then make a copy of what is sent. This way we have two copies. One set to distribute and the master copy. This saves us from having to re-order files when the post office loses a batch. We can just copy from our masters. They have managed to lose two batches so far out of the 80+ batches that we have sent out to transcriptionists. When we get the batches back from the transcriptionists, they are then set aside until a full Book or county is complete. They are then processed to go online. We currently have the following counties distributed and in transcription. If there are only one or two trancribers, we have listed their name here as well: > > San Bernardino Book Two > Los Angeles Book One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six > Marin Book One and Two Betty Vickroy > Colusa Book One and Two Sue Wood and Justina Cook > Humboldt Book One and Two > Butte Book Two Chuck and Carol Stewart > >Other counties in the transcription phase are: > > Mendocino Phil Carnahan > San Luis Obispo Barbara Erden > Placer Jacqui Marcela > Klamath Laura Melton > Mariposa Steven Miller > City of Oakland George Rushton > San Benito Dee Sardoch > Siskiyou Laura Melton > >We also have other counties where digital photos of the records are being taken to transcribe from. This saves us in the expense category and is greatly appreciated of the people doing this huge project. > >Several people have asked to transcribe designated counties only. Although this can be arranged, this is difficult on us. We do the best we can. Some of our transcibers are actually going to the recorder's offices and transcribing from the original records on their laptops. These people need extra praise for not only transcribing, but for taking the time to drive there and to be limited by the hours of the government offices. > >DONATIONS: Desperately needed. We pay about .35 per page of about 40 names for the indexes. Some records cost a little more. When we are dealing with a county like Los Angeles with over 40,000 names, you can see the cost factor go up. Now we would like to get San Francisco started and that is even more. How much more, we do not know yet, but that was a heavily populated area during the mid 1800s to 1905. For this reason, we need all the help we can get. We have some people that are sponsoring whole counties and we have others sending small checks to help. All is appreciated. ALSO, postage to get the files to the transcribers is greatly appreciated. Each packet that we send out to be transcribed averages about $1.25 in postage. We have sent out over 80 at this point. That is a lot of postage. We need your help, no matter how much. Please send donations to me. It will be greatly appreciated. > >One other item that we are going to throw out for discussion. We have thought about taking the completed records and placing the information on CD and selling those CDs to help finance the project. We have not determined price or availability at this point, but would like to know if something like this would be of interest to those of you out there doing research. The same info would be online, but some people would like these to donate to genealogical societies, libraries etc. Funds would cover costs and add to the project income to finance future counties. Don't forget that when we are finished with the deaths, we are hoping to go to marriage and birth records. Your opinion on this is greatly appreciated. > >I would like to take a couple lines to thank Steve Melton for his undying help in getting this project online. He had his hard drive go down and need replaced as well as some other minor computer problems in the middle of setting up and uploading the webpage. We could not do it without him and you are GREATLY appreciated. Laura, who has been serving his meals in front of the computer deserves a vote of thanks on this as well. She is also my assistant coordinator with Steve and keeps us technically on our toes and running. > >A special thanks to Ken Doig who donated the previously transcribed Madera County death records to the site. Ken is the moderator for the Madera County USGenWeb Project. > >For those of you who have missed previous updates, this is the pre-1905 records of deaths that are currently being put on line at: > http://www.rootsweb.com/~bf1905 > >Thanks for all your help and support. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions regarding the site, info, or helping. Till next week..... > >Donna Bradley >Pre-1905 Project Coordinator >P. O. Box 391368 >Anza, CA 92539-1368 > >