2006 Year in Review for Newspaper Abstracts - Finding Our Ancestors in the News! Newspaper Abstracts started out over six years ago simply as a place to share old newspaper articles I had in my collection and has grown into a site with hundreds of contributors and over 30,900 articles - with over 9,100 contributed during 2006! There are currently over 1,500 registered members on the Newspaper Abstracts site and over 10,000 subscribers to the various Old-News mail lists. An average of 750 news items are added each month and over 1,317,000 of these articles have been read on the site in just the last 18 months! I wanted to take this time to remind all of our various members, subscribers, contributors and coordinators of some of the features of the site and clarify some others. If you haven't visited the site in a while, I encourage you to stop by soon to take advantage of many of the new features. Old News Articles Old news articles are submitted on the website at http://www.NewspaperAbstracts.com, and on occasion through one of the mail lists, by site visitors, regular contributors along with county and state coordinators. For more information on how to submit news articles and what type of articles are accepted on the site please visit http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/link.php?id=1588 and http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/link.php?id=1590. Mail Lists There are 53 mail lists associated with the Newspaper Abstracts website. Through the miracle of computers, all articles added to the site are automatically sent to two mail lists by the script on the website. The first mail list an article goes to is Newspaper-Abstracts@rootsweb.com. This is the main list for Newspaper Abstracts and has the most traffic - normally over 600 emails per month. The second list the article goes to is the state specific list, for example, an article posted in any county in Missouri is sent to the MO-Old-News@newspaperabstracts.com mail list, an article posted in Illinois goes to IL-Old-News@rootsweb.com, etc. More information, including subscribe and unsubscribe instructions for the mail lists can be found at http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/link.php?id=2339. Acknowledgements The actual submitter of any news article can be found on the website with the article. Under the title of the article is a by-line, which shows the chosen user name of the contributor. When an article is submitted to the site, an email automatically goes out to the appropriate mail lists and subscriber list. These articles are sent to the list from the administrative email address for the Newspaper Abstracts website, which is articles@newspaperabstracts.com. This is NOT the email address of the actual contributor of the news article. To view and/or contact the actual contributor of the article, you will need to follow the link in the email message to the Newspaper Abstracts website. Newspaper Abstracts Registered Members The Newspaper Abstracts website allows visitors to register for a free account. Once registered, the member can choose to subscribe to a specific county and/or state. By subscribing, the member is notified each time a new article is added to the county and/or state that the member subscribed to. To unsubscribe, the member only needs to return to the main page for the county and/or state that they are receiving notifications from and click on unsubscribe. Alternately, a registered member can log in at the site and go to 'Options', then go to 'Manage Subscriptions'. This area will list all county, state and/or specific article pages that you have subscribed to and allow you to unsubscribe from there. A new feature for registered members provides you with another place to post your research information. Under your profile, you can now list items such as your family history web page, surnames you are researching, along with a limited amount of research information. You can set your account to receive private messages as well as have your own guestbook. You may turn these options on or off in your profile setting. The advantage of registering with the site and accepting private messages is in the ability to have others contact you without giving out your email address, thereby reducing the amount of unwanted messages. Posting Restrictions In an effort to thwart inappropriate posts on the site, all postings, including news articles, comments and postings to guestbooks, are subject to approval by the administrator. Once a member has posted a number of appropriate posts, whether as comments, guestbook submissions or article submissions, their account is manually upgraded to a contributor account and their posts are no longer held pending administrator approval, though all postings are still reviewed and subject to removal if not deemed appropriate for the site. And Finally I would like to take this time to thank all of those who have taken the time to submit news items to the site over the past 7 years. Your contributions are greatly appreciated. For a list of the top contributors to Newspaper Abstracts, please visit our homepage at http://www.NewspaperAbstracts.com. I would also like to thank those volunteers who help with specific counties and states. A list of current state and county coordinators can now be found on the site at http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/leaders.php. Many more coordinators are also needed for other areas of the site. To learn more about becoming a state or county coordinator, see http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/link.php?id=2317. Wishing all a wonderful and blessed 2007! Barbara Freeman Site Administrator Newspaper Abstracts - Finding Our Ancestors in the News! http://www.NewspaperAbstracts.com