With all the different projects that is involved in the USGenweb. I've noticed that there's an awful lot of redundancy in files. For instance, you have bios at the genconnect page, you have bios in the archives, you have bios at the county pages. Same goes with the pre 1907 index and cemetery transcriptions... probably everything for that matter. I have them on my county page, others have them at their pages, but they are also in the archives. Where "should" they really be? I know that the object is to have things archived (hence archives project hey?) so that people don't necessarily have to be searching in WI to find a name... BUT having these things in 3 (or more) different places cannot be helping. I for one have spent hours and hours reformatting Works databases that people have sent me to get my indexes to look nice in HTML. I'm all for the archives project, but I sure as heck don't want to spend more hours reformatting them to look nice in text so the same file can go into the archives and take up more bandwidth. Researchers can submit their data to the archives, but a lot of the types of files they've submitted in the past can now be submitted by them on one of the genconnect boards. I almost feel like we're encouraged to do all this redundant work so we can have "however many MB of data" for our state or whatever. And if it's all about archives, then what's the point of having the county pages because the exact same info is there too in most cases. It's just prettied up to fit our personalities and bylaws. It seems like it would be easier if everyone could just work together on some of this stuff so you don't have CC's and special projects people researching the same files to put online. A volunteer's time could be used much wiser. The person who heads up the cemetery transcription project (or used to) was smart and just made links to county pages that had transcriptions on them. Perhaps the census project could do the same for county pages that have census info or even just indexes, while they work on their "official" transcription. I don't have an answer for the archives, they're just in a league of their own with their own search feature they have. Perhaps there could be a search engine that searched our county pages too at a central search page so one wouldn't have to be searching just WI (well we can't even do that now with the county pages). If they're at rootsweb.com sites, it shouldn't be a problem. (a lot, but not all are) Has this ever been brought up by the state or national coordinators at one of their meetings, or is it just past my bedtime? : ) Melissa ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

I think you bring up good points. I maintain several county sites, and work in the archives as well. The way I have used the "system" --and I believe this is for what it was intended --is to store all of my substantial files in the archives, and keep very little in the way of data on my websites. My webpages link to that archives copy. It is formatted carefully once --in text. The files in the archives have the benefit of being completely searchable, and they are in a format accessible by *anyone* --even those with disabilities. I agree that the GC Boards, aside from the query boards are redundant, but there are a lot of folks who feel better about using them to submit their data. Plus, it gives people ideas for submitting stuff. Also, the archives are permanent. County pages sometimes have the annoying habit of disappearing overnight. Many people choose to not use them, and there are a variety of reasons for that. One is that some county CCs believe that they "take over" the county site, but I think they are a tool and I use them as such. I believe that one main purpose of the county page is to offer the nuances of successful research in a specific area, and to list all of the resources possible that are available to a researcher --not necessarily to archive data. I have no problems with maintaining a TOC on my website to go with the files in the archives for my county, rather than formatting the files in HTML to go on my webpage. (speaking of huge timesavers.) Actually, after all that HTML, formatting text files is actually theraputic <G>. The thing with the "Tombstone Transcription Project" and the other special archives projects, is that they are basically TOCs for certain types of files within the archives. They aren't a seperate or duplicate set of transcriptions. Their main purpose is to group one of a kind of file together visually, to encourage more transcribers and volunteers. Kelly > -----Original Message----- > From: Melissa . [mailto:kewauneegen@hotmail.com] > Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2000 12:44 AM > To: WIGEN-L@rootsweb.com > Subject: [WIGEN-L] late night thinking-redundancy > > > With all the different projects that is involved in the USGenweb. I've > noticed that there's an awful lot of redundancy in files....