Earlier today Pat asked: > In several recent posts, people, like Lee, have stated that they have > upwards of 50,000 people in their database. It brings to mind the > question - What will happen to all that work after I die? or better > yet - What can I do now to preserve that information? Because our > databases are not static and change on an almost daily basis, it?s > not practical to start printing out 50,000 Individual Reports that > you could give to an archive or library because what you print today > would possibly be changed by tomorrow. One could write a book that > might include a few thousand of those people in it but what happens > to all the information you have gathered on all those other thousands > of collateral people? I?d be interested in hearing of people?s plans > for their TMG databases and also their Second Site websites after > they are gone. Thanks. Our Edmund Rice (1638) Association currently has over 220,000 person records in our association TMG database. As an association we must plan for future generations who will continue enhancing our association records. A few years ago we asked ourselves what we would do when Bob Velke decided that WhollyGenes could no longer support TMG. We decided that the only viable way to plan for the transition from TMG to a new, unknown, computer program was to make our database compliant with GEDCOM conventions. Among other TMG functions that means no witness and no roles functions. Each fall we import a GEDCOM from TMG to a different program to try to identify data incompatibilities with our TMG database. When John Cardinal's Second Site GEDCOM sibling comes along we will have an additional test generating web pages from our TMG GEDCOM. Until a better data exchange format comes along we will observe the GEDCOM data exchange conventions. Many of you will not like this solution; we welcome other solutions. Best, George George W. King, Historian Edmund Rice (1638) Association www.edmund-rice.org