Don't get me wrong, I love doing research at 3 AM in my bathrobe instead of waiting weeks or months for microfilm rolls and cramming a lot of stuff into a few hours in the library and so forth. It is so much better than spending thousands of dollars to travel all over the country and deal with decreasingly helpful county clerks. I really do *love* online genealogy and subscribe to just about every paid subscription site out there and have made a lot of progress beyond the 40 previous years of doing things the old fashioned way. I am extremely grateful to the LDS mothership for giving us Rootsweb and FamilySearch.org, along with the other sites in their genealogy megalopoly. My guess on the problem with the "A" website (from experience with maintaining websites) is that one of several things can and will go wrong in conducting a search for information on a big website such as this one: 1) the specific database itself has been corrupted and thus record #x1 through record #xy12 are no longer "read" in a search; 2) the database's index has been corrupted and thus the search no longer accesses the full index, and/or the link to a particular database or part thereof has not yet been added (thus you will not find things in newly added databases until months later if ever when you do a global search); 3) a link that used to be valid is no longer valid because things have been copied to different servers, folders, etc; 4) the file has been translated into a different kind of file format, and in the process, records were lost, compressed, or somehow are not now read (I think I have noticed several cases of this sort of thing); 5) there is so much transcription going on that in order to maximize profits, the work has been sent to a developing country where English is a second language and a census taker's writing looks as much like Greek to them as Parsi does to us :-) ; 6) your computer or data transfer method is faster than their server can keep up with, so you get a fragmented return (this has happened to me and I had to go in and reduce my modem speed so that census and newspaper and historical book images would download, otherwise, I would get a "sorry" message or "server not found"). In any case, the problem should always be reported and when one gets back the standard computer-generated message, one should pick up the phone and raise holy heck to first the sales and next the technical support folks. It is their job to maintain such failures of performance on their website. You are paying premium money for a service which you are not receiving "as advertised." If you don't officially complain, then the squeaky wheel (the consumer at large) will not get the grease. Good example, why is the SSDI (a prime number one "go there first" resource) no longer being updated? Out of experience, I have almost quit using the global search feature and go directly to "list all databases" and scroll through to whatever looks promising. Even then, I see that some of those databases have changed format. A good example is the Iowa State Censuses. What I have from 2 years ago is vastly different from what comes up now. (Searching on the same names that produced results then does not produce results now.) I find it interesting that at the moment, a link from another website will take me right to a search engine for a particular book in the family & historical books collection, while logging directly onto "A" and typing in the exact same search criteria either as a global search or directly in the family & historical books collection gets me either nothing or 322,245 results. Something is wrong with that picture. Onward through the fog. > [Original Message] > From: Don <dwdwrks2@omnitelcom.com> > To: <IOWA-L@rootsweb.com> > Date: 9/20/2004 12:41:15 PM > Subject: Re: [IOWA] Civil War Records > > It seems like "A" has a way of making changes and not telling anyone. The > information is still there and it doesn't cost any more (this time) - it's > just a more complicated path now to find it. > > Don Woodley > > Researching Ayers, Butler, Cornford, Relf, Trindle, Woodley and others as > time permits. > > RAOGK Lookups and pix for Bremer, Butler, Floyd & Franklin Counties in Iowa. > > > ==== IOWA Mailing List ==== > The IOWA Lists now have their own website with unsub > instructions, list rules and other useful information. > Visit & Bookmark http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~richard/ialist > > ============================== > Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration > Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more. > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=4930&sourceid=1237