Greetings fellow NYULSTER-L members! I like to occasionally let you know how things are going for our list... MEMBERSHIP STATS As of today, March 28, 1999, we are up to a total of 277 members! There's been a lot of activity as a result, and I hope that many of you are finding some long missing pieces of your family puzzles. THANK YOU TO OUR VOLUNTEERS One of the reasons this list has been so successful is because of the help of some special people. I would like to extend a special thank you on behalf of the whole list to the handful of Ulster County locals who have been so kind and helpful in offering to do look ups. (I'm afraid to start naming names, because I might leave someone out!) A reminder to those who ask for help: These kind people are volunteers, which means that they love genealogy, but they also have other things going on in their lives. So remember to be as complete as possible when making a request. Give as much information as you know: names, locations and actual or approximate dates; more information will make their search a lot easier. (A name and location only is not very helpful when Ulster County has 300+ years of history) Thank you again to our wonderful helpers! ADDRESS CHANGES A quick reminder to anyone who is going to have an e-mail address change. Please remember to unsubscribe from the list BEFORE your old address is turned off, then resubscribe when the new address is activated. This will save me a lot of time doing manual maintenance (I'm the one getting all the error messages!). Thank you! TEXT FORMAT Another reminder that messages being posted to the list need to be in plain text format. Messages in any other format, such as MIME, are rejected by the server. Depending on your e-mail package, you can probably change this by going to your mail preferences options. SENDING POSTINGS TO THE RIGHT PLACE? If you are saving addresses to your address book, make sure that your postings go only to NYULSTER-L@rootsweb.com. The "other" address, NYULSTER-L-request@rootsweb.com is only for subscribing and unsubscribing. SHARING PUBLISHED INFORMATION When doing genealogy, we all walk a fine line between being helpful and hurting local genealogy societies, or possibly even violating copyright laws. So, some guidelines might help you a bit: 1. Always cite a source you are quoting from. If you know and if it's available, let the person know where they can purchase that resource for their own reference. (Many books we use are a primary source of income for local societies--subsistance income at that!). 2. Do not transcribe whole pages from published works which are still in print/available. Passages are usually fine, as long as you credit the source. However, if you have done your own research, for example, transcribed gravestones at a cemetery yourself, share as your heart leads. I'm so glad to see so many people using our mailing list...we're even getting a steady number of postings from non-subscribers (in which case, make sure your reply goes to the individual, as they will not get an automatic response from the list). All the best for the holidays to you all. Lisa Stitt List Owner NYULSTER-L and VANKEUREN-L LSTITT@warwick.net