In a message dated 5/23/99 8:25:55 AM Central Daylight Time, rkeason(a)tir.com
writes:
<<
You are right. It is just plain dumb to have two census projects. But up
until this last motion, there was only one. Linda Lewis started the other
pages, duplicating what we were already doing. She created the confusion by
setting up a totally new set of pages, taken from old pages we no longer
used. >>
I have to admitt that I am a bit puzzled by all of this. The following is
straight from the USGenWeb Page......
"The goal of the Archives Project is to put public domain records online so
that they are freely accessible to everyone. Linda Russell Lewis is the
coordinator of this project. Several sub-projects have originated from the
Archives Project:
The Census Project's goal is to transcribe all census data and place it
online. As you might imagine, this is an enormous job and transcribers are
needed to extract the census data from the original rolls. See the Census
Project home page or contact Kay Mason, Census-On-Line Project Coordinator,
for further information."
Now this statement would lead me to believe that Kay Mason handles all census
records and that Linda Lewis handles all other public domain records (i.e.
marriage records, passenger lists, tax lists, etc.). There is, I believe
also someone responsible for the "Tombstone Project". It USGenWeb, on its
own webpage lists an "Archive Project", a "Census Project" and a
"Tombstone
Project", then I am currently wondering why all of this is a problem.
Shouldn't Linda Lewis be handling all public records other than census
records and tombstone/headstone records?
After all, all of these take an enourmous amount of time and responsibility,
wouldn't it make sense to have one person handling all census records, one
handling all of the tombstone project and one for all other records?
And I would think it would matter less where the records are stored than the
fact that they ARE stored. After all, simply having the records available
is the most important thing and is what we work toward at this project.
I am also wondering why it has been said that people are having a difficult
time accessing/ finding the census records that are available. As a county
coordinator, I would think that all of us, as county coordinators have links
on our pages to any available census records for our county/counties.
I'm sure some of you will let me know that things are not that simple, but it
certainly would be nice if they were. After all, in the mist of these
"power struggles", as they have been labeled by some, it would be a real
shame for the real purpose of all this work to be lost. That purpose be to
provide help and resources to the genealogical community.
Just some thoughts.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Regards,
Cindy Brock