Hi everyone. I wanted to make a BIG plug for switching over our
query/surname pages to the GenConnect system. For a long time I hesitated
on doing this to my pages, thinking it would be difficult and a big hassle.
Once I took the plunge, it took me less than 3 minutes to set up the page
(
http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/AdminCenter/activate.html), less than one
day for the page to be set up by the system, and less than 2 minutes for me
to activate the board (keep in mind the Surname List link doesn't get set
up by the system for a week or so).
Instead of transferring all the old queries to the system, I made one
e-mail and beside "To" I pasted all the e-mail addresses of persons who had
posted queries/surnames. In the e-mail I said that I was switching the
query/surname pages over to GenConnect and that the advantages were 1) the
queries/surnames are posted immediately and 2) their surnames get entered
in the national searchable database. I then asked the people to enter a new
query on the GenConnect page. My reasoning behind this was to give them an
opportunity to update the information they wanted in their query (some of
mine were over a year old) and give them the chance to enter their surnames
into the system (as opposed to me listing the ones I think they may want
listed).
Not to preach, but I think we are doing a big disservice to our researchers
by "hiding" their queries and surnames on our county pages. As an example,
if a person from Europe is searching for ancestors who emigrated to the
U.S., they may not know the state or county they moved to, but by using the
Surname Helper they could search and find those queries/surnames.
It is true that we are "giving up control" of some of our web pages by
using GenConnect, but isn't our whole purpose to help the researcher?
Thank you for letting me share my thoughts! Mary