Robert: That sounds so interesting. I'm sure over time you have met interesting people. Thanks for letting me know about it. Carol On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 2:03 PM, ROBERT E PATY <dback1935@msn.com> wrote: > Most of you know that I work with obituaries on a daily basis but probably > don't know exactly what my work entails. That is because I am sure I > never gave you the details. It is really simple, interesting, and sometimes > can be considered fun. I started in August, 2001 and have never regretted > doing it. I found information about two relatives on my mother's side of > the family and two on my fathers' side. I would not have known that they > passed without the information entered by a volunteer in another state.I > enter certain information from the obituaries published in my daily > newspaper. These go to a Rootsweb site (The Obituary Daily Times). You can > access the website at this URL; www.rootsweb.ancestry.com~obituary/. You > can subscribe at the same URL to have access to the database without > becoming a volunteer. This site is used by genealogists around the world > looking for information about possible relatives. They are always looking > for volunteers to "index" obituaries from local newspapers. If you have > some spare time, consider becoming a volunteer. You can go to the website > by clicking on the above link to find out what newspapers are available for > adoption. If you decide to adopt a paper you will be assigned to a trainer > who will email you instructions about downloading the obit filer program. > You will also be able to download and print the training manual. I don't > know if any changes have been made since I printed mine in 2001. It was > seven pages long at that time. There is no time limit for doing this work. > You do it at your leisure. You might have to leave the program in the > middle of a day's entries but you will be able to go back and pick up where > you left off. There are only eight fields for every obituary you index. I > just looked at my manual and it says six fields but there are eight in the > program I downloaded. These are: Surname; First Name w/middle name or > initial; maiden name; other last names; nickname (if any); age; place of > birth; place of death. Most of the time you will not make entries in all of > these fields since you can only enter the information contained in the > obituary. You just skip the fields that you have no info for. I have > indexed obits that contain nothing but a name. I indexed one for a 90 year > old woman who outlived six husbands. The surnames of all six were in the > obit. One of them was the surname of her last husband, which was the > surname shown in her obit. The other five were entered in the "other last > name" field. I think the oddest one I ever had was for a female. The only > name given was Dagmar. No other name. There was an age and a place of > death. I had to email my trainer to find out how to handle this. From time > to time you might get requests for copies of obituaries. The training > manual tells you how to respond. I have one man who is researching a > certain surname and anytime I have an obit with that surname or that name > as a middle name I can count on getting an email from him asking for a copy > of the obit. I have met some very interesting people this way. You could > too. > > This will give you a very good idea how I spend my spare time. Gotta run > now! I have to take my sister to an appointment with a retina specialist > this afternoon and I haven't even showered yet. > > > Robert E Paty, Scottsdale, AZ aka Mad Hatter > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "an-internet-family" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to an-internet-family+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to an-internet-family@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/an-internet-family. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >