Just thought I'd let you all know the status of the Lebanon Obit project. I am now in the process of scanning in the 1998 listings and am up to the letter "F" .. we can all thank Shirley Brown (and the enlisted help of her mother) for being so thorough in her collection of this information. Almost all of the names have not only the regular obituary listing, but also the funeral notices as well. Where there are pictures, I've included those in the list of files to be included. I was also amazed and delighted to see that most names also have date of birth, parent names, and spouse maiden names. The parent names would give researchers a link into the 1800's for many of these listings since a lot of the deaths occurred for people in their 80's and 90's. I had a false start in the beginning when I tried scanning and using OCR. Despite the resolution, my program decided where and if I would insert a symbol, tilde, or just ignore the text all together and print plain gibberish. It would have taken twice as long to clean up and correct the work done after OCR so I just converted all the scanned "image" files to gif files for the web. I will create a surname search page for each alpha letter (which will include all surnames -- the deceased, their spouse, parents, and if time allows, survivors). By clicking on the surname, it will take you to the condensed version that name (Last, first, maiden). Clicking on an individual name will take you to the actual obit (gif file) that includes all the other names that were on the scanned page (easily readable) and any funeral info for that person as well as survivor, sibling, parents, groups belonged to, church affiliations, etc. The site itself will be on the Rootsweb server with a link to the Lebanon County Genweb Site. Thank you to all of the persons who volunteered to help. At this point, I'm trying to figure out how I can recruit your assistance. If you're using Excel for 95 or the Office 97 version, you may be able to take the names off of the gif files I have and insert them in a file for me. I have it set up for the second phase right now (Last name, First & Middle, Maiden, Date of Death). The first phase will be the easiest .. just sorting the Last name column and posting to the website for the search. If any of you are interested, I can email the gif files for a specific letter (the c's, d's, e's, etc.) ..it's usually about 10 files at 230k each (for those less familiar with file sizes.. you can fit 5 or 6 of these files on each 3 1/2" floppy disk... they are not very large files. Shirley has also graciously given me the 1995 obits and when the 1998 ones are finished, I'll tackle those next. I'm hoping to keep going to earlier and earlier years through the newspaper archives after these are finished. On a related note. As an English major, I've always been a reader and many of the "stories" behind these obits are fascinating and touching. I've read of husband's following their wives to the eternal beyond just month's after their spouse died.. in one case it was only 3 months... Other's have had such full lives and been active in their community .. touched SO MANY lives, experienced so much.. I have to wonder if they departed out of sheer exhaustion... In all, I think I've tried in most cases to learn about the people behind the names as I typed them. It's my sincere hope that someone out there finds the persons they seek and gets a chance to learn something about who they were. Mary ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ mhervey@micronet.net genmail@micronet.net Visit my genealogy page: http://genweb.net/~rayglod Mary's BorderWorld: http://members.xoom.com/mhervey RESEARCHING: RAY, ABSON, WORSHAM, PHARRIS, GUNNELLS, PARTON, CATLETT, WEBB (TN); GLOD, ZOMBALLUS (CT/PA); RAMSEY (KY) ~~~~~~~~~~~ Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Volunteer - http://www.rootsweb.com/~tnraogk/index.htm (Lebanon, PA area) Proud to be a Sponsor-Plus Member of Rootsweb ~~~~~~~~~~ I'm not stuck, I'm ancestrally challenged...After 30 days, all WEALTHY unclaimed ancestors will be adopted......