In a message dated 12/14/98, 9:15:35 AM, TNMAURY-L@rootsweb.com writes: <<I am always very willing to share my information, because, with many people working on the same or similar lines, more information is found. That I feel, is of importance in doing genealogical research.>> And sometimes one researcher will have access to information that no one else could ever find. This recently happened to me. Having hit what seemed like a dead end on my maternal grandfather's line, I found a descendant of his brother online, the only member of this family I have ever found. I had a sister of my grandfather in my files that she had never heard of. This child has no documentation--no birth certificate, no death certificate, no census record because she was born and died between censuses. I knew about her because my mother's oldest sister is named for her. My sources are not on my Web, but I make it clear that anyone is welcome to e- mail me for sources, and I am scrupulous about documenting where I get information. I also make clear that my information came from many sources and that some of it I have not personally verified. It would be very difficult to put only research that I have personally done into tree format because there would be gaps. If I didn't enter data received from others in my Family Tree Maker, there would not be much point in seeking the data, some of which it is geographically possible for me to personally confirm. Before I post my files on my page, I run them through Gedclean to eliminate personal information about living individuals. I love to share information and will even volunteer to do lookups for people if I don't have the person they are looking for in my data. If I add data to my files that I get from a Web page, I try to e-mail the person and ask their permission. When I first started, I did not know anyone expected me to do that, however. I think it would be ridiculous to go back and remove all that data from my files. It is my impression that most people's pages contain substantial amounts of data that they obtained from other people, and I have never had anyone tell me that I could not use theirs. Most people who post data on the Internet do so in order to share it, I believe. Now, it is one thing to add names, dates, and personal information about ancestors to one's page. Presumably this is public information available to everyone. It is another thing to appropriate more creative uses of this data. I wrote a brief sketch of my fourth great-grandfather for my page and was a little disgruntled to find it posted verbatim and with no source on the page of someone I had shared data with. I pondered what to do and decided, for the sake of good will, to say nothing, particularly since he had put a link to my page on his. And, it's not as though I am going to publish this sketch or win any literary awards for it. I think we need to keep a perspective about why we are doing this research. As someone else said, most of us are doing it for fun; and I know that many of us enjoy finding distant cousins online almost as much as we enjoy finding another piece of our ancestral puzzle. Also, I think that since online genealogy is so new, the rules are still in a state of development and it is not clear to most of us exactly what they are. Sara Binkley Tarpley