>From The New York Times:               April 21, 2001               Ellis I. Web Site Is Deluged by Family Historians               By JAYSON BLAIR Officials struggled yesterday to increase the capacity of an online database that tracks immigrants who were brought into theUnited States through Ellis Island after the Web site was deluged with visitors. Officials at the Statue of Liberty- Ellis Island Foundation, which runs the American Family Immigration History Center's Web site, said they have more than quadrupled the amount of computer memory in the servers that run the searchable database, which went into service Tuesday. Still, they estimate that more than one out of every seven users who has tried to visit the Web site has failed. Foundation officials said yesterday that they were working with one of their sponsors, Compaq Computer, to increase their server capacity The database, extracted from microfilms of the original paper manifests, covers arrivals at Ellis Island from 1892 through 1924, when as many as 5,000 people a day arrived for processing. The Web site, www.ellisislandrecords.org, is proving to be so popular that officials at the center have been unable to accurately count the number of hits per second since Tuesday. "We thought we were prepared," said Peg Zitko, a spokeswoman for the foundation. "But we have found that the word got out pretty fast and that we have a   pretty popular site."   The database, which includes records of more than 17 million immigrants who came   through Ellis Island, is already powered by 13 servers based in a data center   created to handle large volumes of traffic and memory-consuming searches.  Ms. Zitko said Compaq officials were considering adding 5 to 10 new servers, depending on whether the site continues to receive so many hits.  By late Tuesday, more than eight million people had completed searches of the  database, she said.