Hi All, I'd need your opinion on this new development. You know the way we have queries now on the Kankakee pages - the submitter fills out a form and the query goes to the bottom of a page until I go in and edit and index it. I have not been very good at doing this for the last few months, primarily because I have been rebuilding the system I have for keeping track of queries and surnames since my hard drive died in February (now I have a zip drive for back up.) Well, I finally have everything nearly all set so I can get back into the swing of things this weekend when Rootsweb goes and produces these new County Resource Pages. If you have been going to different counties and looking at queries, you have probably seen the GenConnect system for queries, obits, ect. This system has been available to USGenWeb counties upon request since April a year ago. Well, now, I guess, RootsWeb - GenConnect seems to think their system is the best and only way to go because Roots Web has set up County Resource Page for each county at http://resources.rootsweb.com/USA/ complete with a suite of seven (7) GenConnect boards that include: Bibles, Biographies, Deeds, Obits, Queries, Pensions and Wills. RootsWeb is NOT USGenWeb. RootsWeb provides many wonderful resources, including the mechanism and space and search utility for this list and the space for the Kankakee ILGenWeb site, but USGenWeb and RootsWeb are two separate entities. RootsWeb has hosted mailing lists, then newsgroups, then web pages for genealogy for many years. USGenWeb was started about three years ago as an organization of volunteers who thought it would be a great idea to have regional Web sites, hosted by volunteers, to provided researchers with information on local resources, a place to post queries, a way to connect to people willing to do lookups, and some way to index it all. When I started the Kankakee ILGenWeb Site, I put it on the web space provided to me as a Keynet.net subscriber. Some time after that RootsWeb started offering space and eventually I moved it to RootsWeb. Currently about 90% of the ILGenWeb counties are on RootsWeb. I am not sure of the national percentage, it is probably high. The point is that although Rootsweb is very generous in providing this space, Rootsweb is not USGenWeb, and not all USGenWeb counties, or even all USGenWeb states, are located on the RootsWeb servers. RootsWeb is doing good things, it is run by good people, and it is currently supported by only any money donated to it, (although they are looking to sell ads.) RootsWeb is not some Borderbutt (FTM) outfit out to make a buck. The reason I am explaining all this is that it is important to understand that USGenWeb and RootsWeb are two different entities when making a decision about these GenConnect boards. Start at the URL above and you will be able to click on a few links to bring you to RootsWeb's Kankakee County Resource page. Starting near the top, you will find County Web Sites at RootsWeb and you will see the Kankakee Co IL Genealogy (Kankakee ILGenWeb) link. The only reason this link is here is because RootsWeb provides the space for this Web site. If the Kankakee ILGenWeb site was located on someone else's servers, Rootsweb would not even have a link to the Kankakee site here. I looked at the RootsWeb Iroquois county page and for some reason it lists only the Iroquois County ILGenWeb Site and not the ICGS page even though it is located at RootsWeb? Scroll down and you will see the ILKANKAK mailing list. Um, we decided to have a tri-county list since there is such overlap in genealogy research between Ford, Iroquois, and Kankakee Counties. I imagine you will see the same situation in New York where they have combined five counties into a NYC list and in Rhode Island where the list members have just a state list because, well, its Rhode Island for Pete's sake. If you go down further, you will see the GenConnect Boards. There they are, they exist. The reason I and many County Coordinators are up set by this is that, although we are supposed to have first dibs on them, If we choose a different method of posting queries or obituaries, ect, THESE BOARDS ARE STILL HERE AND WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE TO ANY DUFFUS WHO WANTS TO RUN THEM. Excuse me, but I just think this is silly and confusing and time consuming to any one who would be either posting a query or scanning for a query to answer. As you might be able to tell, I am more than a little upset that the RootsWeb county resource pages, seems to me to be Rootsweb forcing their way of doing things regardless of the visitors and volunteers wishes. Anyways, there are advantages and disadvantages to having Queries, ect., in the GenConnect boards. The advantages I can see are that the submitted information is automatically posted and indexed and responses can be posted. If there were no disadvantages, I would have snatched the boards up the instant they were available. Disadvantages: !. Information posted to GenConnect stays in GenConnect. The information is said to belong to the person who posted it, and he could request that it be removed or edited by the maintainer of the board, If we decide we have found a better way to post, for instance, biographies. The biographies already posted to GenConnect would remain there until each submitter individually requested to have them removed. And even then, the board would become and orphan board and would be up for adoption. 2. The format of the information is as you see it. If we want the information arranged differently, we are out of luck. If GenConnect decides to change the way the information is organized, we are stuck with their decision. 3. We do not know where GenConnect is going to be in five years. The web is ever changing. If you put information in a book or such, you can put it in libraries and there it will be until it disintegrates, the library burns, or some one finds the information so interesting that he absconds with it. Information going into GenConnect might be maintained by a USGenWeb volunteer, but it is going into GenConnect. Here is an Index to the GenConnect boards in Illinois so you can see what they are like. http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/indx/Il.html As coordinator for the Kankakee ILGenWeb Project I have done what I think best for the queries by keeping them out of GenConnect, but I am only the coordinator for the site and I believe the site belongs to you. We do not have to use all the boards, we can decide to only use only some of the boards for the Kankakee ILGenWeb Site. We do not have to use the boards at all. So let's discuss it. Lee Ann