This request/suggestion comes with my Lookup Exchange co-ordinator hat on. Some recent lookups sent *direct* to LE volunteers have been *duplicated* to the lists within a day or so afterwards. Within this intervening period the volunteer may well have spent some time, hours often, dealing with the lookup only to see their efforts being duplicated onlist before they have had a chance to reply to the initial enquiry. Sod's law says that it is the experienced volunteer who often provides much more than a bare bones PR entry, for example, who is likely to be in this position . I would rather not lose *any* frustrated/disenchanted LE volunteers who are understandably not prepared to waste their time in this way just because a lister is impatient for results. Seems to me that pausing for, say, 3 days or so after approaching a volunteer direct, and before doing anything else about it onlist, would be a reasonable way forward. Needless to say the theoretical variant of asking 2 [or more] LE volunteers the same thing at exactly the same time is an abuse of the LE system. There aren't too many 'rules ' this is what each main LE page says. ####### The following is a list of reference works on [county name] which volunteers are willing to search for specific entries. To ask for a look-up, please click on the name by the reference. Requests should be specific: give as much detail as you can. Abuses of the kindness of these volunteers will probably cause them to withdraw their names so please don't ask for all references to a common name, or for time-consuming research. If there are two volunteers against any item then only one may be approached at a time unless no response within 7 days from the first email enquiry. ####### Thanks for listening Gareth List Administrator for Dyfed, CGN & PEM. tirbach@clara.co.uk Lookup Exchange http://home.clara.net/tirbach/lookup.html Help Page http://home.clara.net/tirbach/hicks.html