At 08:06 AM 4/9/03 -0400, Michele wrote: >This is for you folks out there that are complaining about county web sites that are mostly links... It's not 'you folks' - it our National Bylaws. Article II: Purpose: Section 2. This purpose shall be accomplished by presenting websites which shall be central repositories of historical and genealogical research data, donated either by the website coordinator or other contributors. In presenting this information, the foundation of the organization shall be at the local websites (county, township, parish, town, etc.) which shall be linked to the state websites which shall be linked to the national website. The USGenWeb Project shall also provide a "digital library" called The USGenWeb Project Archives. The National Bylaws call on CCs to make their local websites the central repository for data - not the Archives. >The archives are searchable. Therefore, I think every available bit of info should be there. I might be looking for some info on a particular person and I think he is in one county when really he is in another. The search feature of the archives handles that. Many county sites have one or more search engines on them for visitors to use. >If anyone were to take a look at the contributors of the stuff on the McDuffie archives page they would see my name a lot. They can not say that I am not doing anything buy providing links! I have persoanally surveyed 27 cemeteries in less than a month. > >If they want to be so petty about it, I could always pull all the cemeteries I have surveyed off Rootsweb completely and give no one access to it. I could write a cemetery book and get paid for it. > >The whole purpose of GenWeb is to make genealogical info free and accessible to genealogists worldwide. Have they forgotten this? We are not GenWeb. We are the USGenWeb Project - and our portion of it is GAGenWeb. Please do not use the term GenWeb. >I had no idea at all that GenWeb was so political!!! I have been using the info on the pages for several years, at least 6. I have always wanted to be a part of it. > >This is really starting to get ridiculous. > >Michele Lewis >McDuffie Co, GA > >P.S. But just to satisfy you people that oppose the links... > >I do have some stuff on my web site that is not on the archives. For example, James Malone, who can do great custom graphics, has drawn me a great map of McDuffie which shows all the old place names that aren't in existence anymore but you will find in old records. That won't go to the archives because it is not searchable. > >Another thing that is not on the archives is the list of lookup people which I hope to increase. I think doing lookups for other people is very important. > >Another thing that I am working on is a list of surnames that are being researched in McDuffie Co with names and email addresses of the researchers so that you can hook up with other people working on your lines. > >It is STUPID to have a copy of the material on the archives page AND the web site. It just takes up valuable space on the server. We are supposed to be one big happy family. This is not supposed to be a territorial issue. The info on the archives is for everyone and I am happy to provide links to it so that people can find the info they need. No it really isn't stupid to have material in more than one place. The Internet is all about redundancy. The more places material appears the better - for if one server is down or dies most likely another source is still up. Its a spreading out of the eggs instead of keeping them all together in one basket. Six years ago the argument of 'valuable space on the server' was valid but not anymore. Each year the cost of storing a megabyte of data has gone down which is most fortunate as the data has mushroomed. Tim