Hi All, I've recently returned from a 5-day trip to San Francisco with my job. Now I'm heading to St. Louis for the rest of the Memorial Day weekend. As you may already know, all of the MAISER discussion lists have been shut down for almost 3 weeks now. Due to a scammer sending thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of messages through to the MAISER main server at Indiana University, they had to shut down their whole system. This has been an ongoing problem which has worsened recently. MAISER is unwilling to continue the surname discussion lists because of this problem which could reoccur and all the costs which would be necessary to set up a new system. GOOD NEWS. ROOTSWEB has decided that they do not want to see the surname lists die off. They are working with Larry Stephens of MAISER to set up all the lists again on ROOTSWEB. There are over 1,000 different surname and historical lists which will need to be transferred over to ROOTSWEB. The procedures for subscribing, signing off, and sending queries will change slightly. Of course the e-mail addresses for the lists will be different. Thanks to ROOTSWEB, this service will continue to be free for all subscribers. (And because each list has its own e-mail address and passwords, it is unlikely that a spam will occur on this system.) ROOTSWEB is the same group that runs the Roots Surname List which tries to link up people researching the same surnames You may find this list located at: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/Genea/rs [includes links to database of some 150,000 surnames submitted by 10,000+ researchers; also links to many resources for tracing genealogy; also link to GenServ with GEDCOM databases online with over 6 million names! and 4550+ databases on files!] They also have Roots-L, which is a discussion group with queries for ALL surnames and all genealogical queries. ROOTSWEB has just gotten the NEVILLE surname list up and running again. I will send a Welcome Message to the discussion list, so that you will be updated on the rules of operation. I hope to hear from you, either by personal e-mail or through the Neville list. Best Wishes, Glenn Gohr (Neville List Manager) ggohr01@mail.orion.org