For my county in Indiana, I just tell them I don't have the resouces to do
lookups and point them to my bibliography/lookups page for what *is*
available (I have a few lookup volunteers), and also encourage them to
submit a query (I use GenConnect, too - it's practically maintenance free).
I also have a separate page with the names of organizations in the county
that have records, such as the library, courthouse, health dept., and
historical/gen societies, and how to contact them.
If you write the message once with all the pertinent information and URLs,
it's a cinch to pull it up anytime you need to and dash it off to each
inquirer.
For the USGenWeb Archives, however, my response is a bit different. :)
Cathy Burnsed
Jim's message was:
I am real lucky with Gilchrist and Alachua Counties. But as
you can guess, Henderson County, KY is a long way off.
There I have a pretty good relationship with the Henderson
County Historical and Genealogical Society (that reminds me,
dues are due), I refer some questions to them.
<snip>
Does anyone have any other ideas on how to handle requests?
%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%*%~-~%
Cathy (GARDENOUR) Burnsed ~ ~ ~ Librarian ~ ~ ~ cburnsed(a)geocities.com
Personal Home Page ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~
http://www.afn.org/~afn30091/index.html
Wells County INGenWeb Project ~ ~ ~ ~
http://www.rootsweb.com/~inwells/
USGenWeb Archives, FL:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/fl/flfiles.htm