--- Sue Renkert <suerenkert@gci.net> wrote: > Regarding information duplicated on Ancestry, please keep in mind that > many Ancestry pages are accessible only to those with paid subscriptions. Sue, I'm going to share this with the Snyder County mailing list in case there are others who misunderstand. Allow me to clarify myself. I didn't say the information is duplicated on Ancestry. I know it is a paid site (I am a member of it), so I wouldn't be foolish enough to transfer information to a site that requires payment. It wouldn't be fair to me (I supplied most of the background information on the Snyder County site for FREE dissemination) or to those who willingly and freely donated information to the site in good faith that their information would remain free. No, the USGenWeb project has historically been hosted by the Rootsweb servers for free, although not everyone in the USGenWeb project has their site hosted at Rootsweb. Ancestry recently underwrote Rootsweb's expanding databases and search engines. Before, Rootsweb tried to thrive on donations. The space for the USGenWeb project is given freely by Rootsweb (as the index page of the Snyder County site makes clear at the bottom). The USGenWeb project makes clear that the county site remains the intellectual property of the county coordinator. In other words, he/she owns it (hence the copyright notice at the bottom of each page of the county site). As Rootsweb indexes many other USGenWeb projects and makes them available for free, I think we need to take a look at where we are duplicating effort. Rest assured, I am committed to the free flow of accurate information. > On another (but related) matter, Logan, I think it is wonderful that Tom > Finsterbush's cemetery transcriptions are linked on the Snyder County > site - no-doubt due to your coordination. Tom has all of his information typed onto hard copy, and as he lacks the means to scan his records into an optical character reader (OCR), he has to completely retype all of his work into plain text files. That is extremely tedious to say the least. So I think that further transcriptions will be forthcoming but will be slow to say the least. > Do you know whether Tom [Finsterbush] would be > willing to provide similar access for his Union County cemetery > transcriptions? He is willing, but his Union County project is partially underwritten by a grant through the Union County Historical Society for their purposes. The society is putting his work into a computerized database for publication, and eventually, I believe, for sale. Thus, he is constrained by the society from freely disseminating in any venue the fruits of the project. ===== Logan Garth Swanger 204 E Middle St Hanover PA 17331-2527 asta2001@yahoo.com Member: National Genealogical Society, Union County (PA) Historical Society, Snyder County (PA) Historical Society (Life Member), South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, Schwanger Family Association __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards� http://movies.yahoo.com/