Hello researches, I have received many emails over the past few days from "newbies" asking questions about Rootsweb, it's organization and purpose. Rootsweb is far more than the email mailing list; it is a community of researchers. The latest figures show only about 7% of the users support Rootsweb financially and the burden for the expense falls solely on the creators, Karen and Brian Leverich. I urge all of you to visit http://www.rootsweb.com and take a look around. Consider the reasons you use the system. Consider maklng a donation or a pledge. Have you visited a county site that has space on Rootsweb.com and found a link to your family either in the archives for that county or a query posted. Did you know every, yes every message that passes through the various mailing list that reside on Rootsweb are archived and searchable? There are no filters except for obvious SPAM. Rootsweb as we know it today started back in the old Fido-Net days by Karen using her position at Rand Corporation to utilize computer space for Roots Surname Listings. For those of you who do not remember or know what Fido-Net was...it was the internet of the 70 and 80s to most of us. Long before Prodigy, AOL, Delphi and yes, GEnie, there was the Fido-Net. I had an old 286 with 4 meg memory and a second telephone line for my bulletin board called The Family Snitch. At any given time there was at least 50 uses. Some just wanted the email capability, others the usenet groups where genealogy over a modem got started. Quoting the USGenWeb site http://www.usgenweb.org; "In the spring of 1996, a group of genealogists organized the Kentucky Comprehensive Genealogy Database Project, which evolved into the KyGenWeb Project. The idea was to provide a single entry point for genealogy data and research for all counties in Kentucky. In addition, the information for each county would be indexed and cross-linked to make it easier for researchers to find a name or data that they sought. In June 1996, as the KyGenWeb Project was nearing 100% county coverage, interested volunteers decided to create a similar set of pages for all states, establishing The USGenWeb Project. Volunteers were found who were willing to coordinate the efforts for each state, and additional volunteers were sought to create and maintain websites for every county in the United States. Although The USGenWeb Project was originally designed to be organized by state and county, much genealogy data cannot be limited to a single county, or even a single state. So, USGenWeb Special Projects have evolved to collect and disseminate data that goes beyond county and state lines. The USGenWeb Project is still growing, and there are always opportunities for new volunteers to adopt county or state pages or participate in a Special Project". When you consider making a contribution, please consider the contribution of your family data. There are literally thousands of surname boards on GenConnect hosted by Rootsweb. Most surnames as well most counties have a compliment of boards that include wills, bios, obits, pension files and Bible records. I hope some of this answers some off the questions. Explore the internet and use the search engines. I personally found one of my hottest leads while doing a search on HotBot. Good luck and enjoy your search. Barbara Bonham, Listowner -- Barbara Farthing Bonham Summerville SC NodineNewsNetwork http://www.tfsweb.net The Family Snitch's Web http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~bfbonham Crawford County, PA On The Web too!