One of our kindly page visitors send in this url for the United States
Internet Genealogical Society, and an internet survey that was conducted.
Think this might prove very enlightening for all of us.
http://www.usigs.org/signal/99-02-2.html#survey
Do please check out the entire website while there.
We would all like to think we're doing something valuable for the
researchers accessing our County pages, so we do our homework,
laying the foundation by providing access to the basic County records,
marriage, death, burial, deeds. Thanks to all those wonderful volunteers
helping you, you are making inroads in getting those County records on-line.
Somewhere in the midst of doing that, hopefully it dawns on us, we still
know next to nothing about our ancestors. Yes, we do have a verified birth
date, marriage record, even a death and burial date. But what does that
mean?
There is something missing, we still know nothing of the real person, and
even
less of the events and the people that affected and shaped their lives.
You've listened to the queries, what they were asking for, what they need.
I've never received a page query asking for a birth or death date. The
questions invariably asked ALWAYS total up to "where can I get more info on
my ancestors?" The researcher is not necessarily asking us to "give" them
the
answers, what they want are the ways & means to find the answers
themselves.
It quickly became apparent, to us, if not to our faithful County researchers
who
had long & deep roots in the County, that while they were asking us
questions,
they knew far more, as a whole, than we did concerning the County and its
residents.
What was needed, was a venue offered, an avenue provided, for them to share
their findings.
So, we asked they share their military pension or bounty land records,
diaries,
letters home, journals, notebooks, family bible records. In short, items
that
neither you nor I, with an army of volunteers could manage to uncover in all
our
lifetimes.
The response has been totally amazing, and we are hustling to keep up with
the
data entry, the html coding and uploading to the page, amidst exploring even
more avenues to offer them.
There are two things for certain: that while many of your page visitors may
not
be up on the latest webpage design techniques or software, cannot do HTML,
have no time or desire to get into that aspect of the Web, they all are into
genealogy research, and have a great deal to offer. The means to contribute
has to be afforded them.
And, if we are to really know and understand our roots in our personal
"walk-about", we have to look at the whole picture: our ancestors, in
relationship to their community, their county their region, their times.
This too
has to be provided.
Carol Johnson Petaluma, Calif 94954 (707) 763-7956
Talbot Co
http://www.rootsweb.com/~gatalbot/gatalbot.htm
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