Dear Debby,
Thank you for the explanations and facts regarding the coordinator's
role. I had some questions about copyright issues, and found clear
and understandable answers on the USGenWeb site at <http://
;.
Thank you to you and all the volunteers who make these records
available and easily accessible for all of us.
There is a role for GenWeb sites (free, easy to find, easy to access,
potential for many researchers to visit the site) and private
websites (ability for submitter to easily control content, update,
etc.). Links between all these sites are absolutely invaluable. God
bless all who work to make these records available for all of us.
Sincerely,
Sharon Seaver
On Oct 29, 2008, at 10:37 PM, Debby Beheler wrote:
Larry,
Perhaps I can answer some of your questions.
Everything does not have to disappear when a new coordinator takes
over.
Unfortunately, the change in coordinators is not always pleasant.
Outgoing
coordinators do not always cooperate. Contributions to a county
site are
the intellectual property of the submitter. So if the submitter
refuses
permission to use the material on the new coordinator's site, these
items
will not be included.
GenWeb by itself is not a proper name for the project. We are
under the
umbrella of the USGenWeb Project; each state project is named
according to
the 2-letter abbreviation, so the Indiana project is INGenWeb,
Texas is
TXGenWeb, Georgia is GAGenWeb, etc.
All of us are unpaid volunteers. Some volunteers are more active than
others.
Each volunteer owns his or her own site. The project does not own
the site.
We do have rules (see:
http://ingenweb.org/
ingen_guidelines2005.htm), but we
cannot force someone to leave their work with the site when someone
new
adopts it. Adherence to copyright laws is essential.
I believe that Ruth has removed the logos of the INGenWeb and USGenWeb
project from her site.
Debby Beheler
dbeheler(a)comcast.net
State Coordinator INGenWeb Project
http://www.ingenweb.org
Bob:
I am very confused about the working of the GenWeb sites. Why does
everything that was on the old Jefferson County site have to
disappear when
a new coordinator takes over? The old site was one of the best that
I have
ever seen ... and that was because of the Ruth, the old
coordinator. She put
a lot into this site as well as yourself and others who
contributed. Other
GenWeb sites have little because the coordinator of these sites are
not
doing their job.
I was continually going to Ruth's Jefferson Co. site long after she
stopped
doing the site. That information SHOULD remain for us to go to
regardless of
the fact that someone new has taken over. The bad thing, of course,
was that
with Ruth gone, we could see the old but nothing new was being
added. I
wanted to add my Nelson Cemetery records but Ruth wasn't there to
put them
on. Sheila now has it on both the Jefferson and Jennings county sites.
I applaud Sheila Kell for wanting to take over the Jefferson and
Jennings
County sites. Finally, we are getting an active site with new
information
being constantly added but it is going to take some time for Sheila
to get
it built back up like it was. Let us remember that Ruth spent years
putting
this in. Sheila is just getting started and, like the majority of
the rest
of us, isn't getting paid to do genealogy. She has a life to live
and can't
spend all her time on this.
What is GenWeb's policy? Are they to blame? It would seem to me
that since
they owe this site, they would control what goes on it. I can't
understand
why they would be agreeable to letting the old info just disappear
like it
has. Or, does it take Ruth, the old coordinator, to agree to let
Sheila use
it? It will take a long time to reenter everything. It seems to it
could
just be copied and pasted from one site to another ... but I have
never
hosted a website.
Sheila has some new records on her site that wasn't on Ruth's site
but we
need BOTH. And I will contribute whatever I can; however, I don't
have the
time to do much. But I agree that it SHOULD remain on the site if
and when
someone new takes over. This is what I don't understand.
I did go to the old site this week and signed up like instructed
but Ruth or
no one else has gotten back to me. I am hoping that Ruth has this
old info
and will make it available to us again even if it ends up on her
own website
and not GenWeb. But it would be nice to have everything on one
site. What
really confuses me is that both the old and new are GenWeb. It
isn't like we
are leaving GenWeb and going to
Ancestry.com.
Please enlighten me a little more on this. Do we need to complain
to GenWeb
about this?
Larry
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