Certainly an interesting concept, please read and look at the referenced
LINK. Thanks!
this article from MISSING LINKS: RootsWeb's Genealogy Journal
Vol. 5, No. 8, 23 February 2000, Circulation: 399,747+
(c) 1996-2000 Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley
Editor-at-Fault: Julia M. Case
Co-Editor-to-Blame: Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG
OCTOGENARIAN TILTS AT WINDMILL
by David W. Dole <dwdole(a)fishnet.com>
<
http://www.obituarycoding.com/>
It occurs to me that MISSING LINKS readers might have a special
interest in the efforts of an octogenarian tilting at a large
windmill (a latter-day Man of La Mancha?). What am I up to? I am
trying to induce newspapers to adopt the insertion into every
obituary they publish (death list or news item) a 15-character
code, which a decade (or a century) later, in the next town (or
on the other side of the globe) will allow any genealogist,
historian, researcher, or librarian working with an obituary,
clipped from its paper and unidentified as to source or date, to
identify the paper, its location, and the publication date.
It all began when, while assisting my wife in trimming,
alphabetizing, sorting, and mounting some 75,000 obituaries of
Norwegians, I realized that the absence of knowledge of the
name of the newspaper, its location, and the publication date
detracted materially from the value of the obituary's "facts."
I set about to fill this gap in knowledge and now have seven
local papers and one national paper using the coding. The coding
is only 15 characters and can be in very small type if space is
tight. All one has to do is go on the Internet to the PGCS Web
site <
http://www.obituarycoding.com/> and "click" to the PGCS
Database page. The first seven characters are listed there in
alphanumeric order and opposite each is the name and address of
the newspaper. The last eight characters of the code are the
publication date. There is no cost to anyone except a very
small, one-time charge to the paper for its unique and exclusive
identity code.
One hang-up is that one ardent genealogist or historian who
sends a letter to the local paper doesn't truly make a great
impression -- gets one vote in but hardly buries the editor in
a landslide. What is really a better approach is to receive the
material from PGCS and use it to alert your local genealogical
or history society, get the matter on its agenda for the next
meeting, and then "move" that the entire membership take the
challenge to register on the PGCS Web site and each get the
personal letter to the newspaper, ready to sign and mail. This
makes for at least a small landslide -- and with luck will
convince the paper to adopt PGCS coding.
Just think, their headline can read, oxymoronically, "Our Obits
Now Live Forever!" And the Quixotic octogenarian will very much
appreciate the help. It has been a tough fight and I really
can't do it alone. I need your help.
Visit <
http://www.obituarycoding.com/> yourself and get the full
story. Then register and, using the material I will send you,
ask your paper to adopt PGCS coding for its obits.
respectfully submitted,
Marge Priser
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~kosco