I am passing on a message from one of the GenConnect Coordinators
explaining one of the better features of the GenConnect boards and
crosslinking. The URL for the "posting hints and tips" explaining
how to Cross-link is:
http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/HINTS/posting.html
Thanks,
John Cain, listowner
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There is another very good reason as well. Let me explain something else
that I don't think that many of the CCs and SCs have grasped yet. Remember
that blurb that most of us have put on our pages explaining when and why
this whole thing started.
In March and April, 1996, a group of genealogists organized
the Kentucky Comprehensive Genealogy Database Project. The
idea was to provide a single entry point for all counties
in Kentucky, where collected databases would be stored. In
addition, the databases would be indexed and cross-linked, so
that even if an individual were found in more than one county,
they could be located in the index.
Read that last sentence again.
GenConnect has provided the means for all the data to be cross-linked
and
indexed... not just within a state but internationally, and without having
to visit a hundred different sites and use a hundred different search
engines. What would any one of you give to sit down at your computer
tonight and using the GC global search engine request a search for your
illusive ancestor and find the following:
1. His bio on a Ky bio board, where he lived for awhile, linked to
2. His obit on a Tn obit board, where his married dau lived, linked to
3. His death certificate entered on a Tx board where he died while
visiting his son, linked to
4. His will and burial information posted to a Va will board because
that's where he lived, linked to
5. His birth record posted to one of the England boards, linked to
6. The family bible proving his ancestry, linked to
7. A surname board giving all those links, including a link to
8. His marriage recorded in the North Carolina USGW archives and maybe
even a file giving you his mothers ancestry for 3 or 4 generations
and who
knows what else?
Wasn't this cross-linking and making the data easily available what
first
KyGenWeb then USGenWeb was all about? Isn't that why every one of us
joined this project in the first place?
GenConnect has made all of this possible if you and your visitors will
take advantage of it. Your visitors probably don't take the time to read
the hints and tips explaining how this is all possible, and I'm sure that
at least 95% of the CCs haven't bothered to read it either. In fact, I'll
bet that most of them think of GC as just a simple way of handling their
queries so they don't have to be bothered with them. But if the CCs using
GC would begin cross-linking their data on their boards to other boards and
the archives, and setting an example, it wouldn't take the visitors long to
get the idea and begin doing it too.
A few visitors and CCs are already doing it. This is one of the
reasons
that GenConnect will not allow a board to be wiped out. You remove just
one bio [obit/will etc] or query that has been linked and you have
potentially broken hundreds of links within the GenConnect system... links
made by the visitors... links that could be making the connection that you
yourself have been looking for for the past 25 years.
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John E Cain; 4601 Concord Drive; Garland, TX 75042
http://www.rootsweb.com/~msamite/index.htm -----Amite County MS
http://www.rootsweb.com/~jecain/index.htm ----Cain/Ware list and My Website.