ROOTSWEB REVIEW: Genealogical Data Cooperative News Vol. 2, No. 18, 5 May 1999. Circulation: 294,480+ (C) 1998-1999 RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative. Editors: Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG <[email protected]> RootsWeb Main Page: <http://www.rootsweb.com/> RootsWeb HelpDesk: <http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/>. Surname Helper: <http://surhelp.rootsweb.com/srchall.html> Threaded List Archives: <http://archiver.rootsweb.com/> NEWS AND NOTES FROM ROOTSWEB ROOTSWEB AT NGS CONFERENCE IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. If you attend the National Genealogical Society's Annual Conference in the States, 12-15 May 1999, hosted by the Virginia Genealogical Society <http://www.vgs.org/> in Richmond, Virginia, please stop by RootsWeb's booth in the exhibit hall. Dr. Brian Leverich, Karen Isaacson, Bob Tillman, Tim Pierce, Ellen Seebacher, Rhonda McClure, "D." from the RootsWeb HelpDesk, and your editors look forward to seeing you there. * * * ... When we launched RootsWeb, we assumed that our users would prefer to support us as much as they were able, in exchange for a site open to all, without banners plastered all over everything and without having resources locked up (as is done at other genealogy sites), available only for fees on the order of $60 per year. Instead, people can support RootsWeb for as little as $12 per year. We thus hoped that a reasonable fraction of our users, perhaps half of them, would support us in some way. And because we expected support from the community, we made promises to projects like USGenWeb that we would freely host them for the good of the Internet genealogy community. We have no intention of reneging on those early promises, but it has been difficult, because the community support we anticipated has not been there. Although people use the site like crazy, fewer than 7% of our users have chipped in to keep things going. The other 93%? Perhaps they're busy, or they're broke, or they won't pay unless they have to, or they don't think RootsWeb is useful. Who knows? But it means that RootsWeb has run at a cash flow loss. In simple terms, Karen Isaacson and Brian Leverich have donated not only their time as system administrators but a substantial part of their personal resources to provide the genealogical community with RootsWeb. The rest of RootsWeb's staff have also made substantial contributions. Because RootsWeb's costs exceed its income, we can't provide all the genealogical facilities we'd like to support. These could include online searchable databases of pension records, census indexes, vital records, or countless other valuable genealogical services that we could easily provide -- if only we could afford the staff to support them. And, ultimately, RootsWeb can't even continue to exist if we don't bring our costs and revenues into balance, something we want to have under control before the transition to non-profit status (as opposed to losing money status) is completed. We are doing what we can to remedy the situation. For instance, we are selling banner advertisements where we can. However, this alone will never provide enough revenue to cover the costs of the unbannered volunteer projects which consume most of RootsWeb's resources yet by their very nature produce no direct revenue, even as they provide invaluable content to the genealogical community. The new communities, from their inception, will be fully supported by advertising. They will be paying their own way. We can shift some of the costs of maintaining the Web, mailing list, GenConnect, and search engine servers onto the new communities, so that the new communities will subsidize a genealogical community that hasn't been supporting itself. Although we have been disappointed in the amount of financial support of the genealogical community, we would like to express our deep gratitude to the writer of the letter above and the other 7% of our users who have helped make RootsWeb available to the whole community. Without their support and encouragement, there would be no RootsWeb. If you would like to join the folks who are making RootsWeb possible and thus help us bring new genealogical data online, freely available to all, please visit: <http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html> or send e-mail to: [email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * MAILING LISTS. For an index to most user mailing lists hosted by RootsWeb, visit <http://www.rootsweb.com/~maillist/>. PERMISSION TO REPRINT articles from ROOTSWEB REVIEW is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, PROVIDED: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Written by <author's name, e-mail address, and URL, if given> Previously published by RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative, RootsWeb Review, Vol. 2, No. 18, 5 May 1999. Please visit RootsWeb's main Web page at <http://www.rootsweb.com/>. TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE, send e-mail that says only SUBSCRIBE (or UNSUBSCRIBE) to: <[email protected]>. BACK ISSUES OF ROOTSWEB REVIEW are available for download from: <ftp://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/review/>. * * * * * MISSING LINKS: A Weekly Newsletter for Genealogists, edited and published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, is a free e-zine distributed on Fridays. Back issues are available for download from <ftp://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/mlnews/>. To subscribe to MISSING LINKS, send an e-mail message that says only SUBSCRIBE to: [email protected] ____ Julia M. Case <[email protected]> Co-Editor of ROOTSWEB REVIEW <http://www.rootsweb.com/~review/> Editor-at-Fault of MISSING LINKS <http://www.rootsweb.com/~mlnews/> To subscribe, send SUBSCRIBE message to [email protected] [email protected] ROOTSWEB GENEALOGICAL DATA COOPERATIVE P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 <http://www.rootsweb.com/>