Hi folks,
Better late than never, right? Business needs on this end held up our first week of help
desk communication. Since I have assumed the SFM (state file manager) duties, there has
been a calling from folks for assistance in managing their web pages and files. Let's
cover some basics so those folks will be as informed as everyone should be.
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Topic #1
Archive Structure and Operation
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NOTE: If you have any questions derived from this discussion, please use Topic #1 in your
subject line and send your email message to the list for complete coverage and response.
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As with any email, we need to be brief and to the point. Questions will naturally arise
as we move through the topics of discussion. Let's look at a short history version of
USGW Archives Project before getting too deep.
"The idea was originally conceived as many volunteers (county coordinators today
--> CCs) of the original 1996 data collecting cooperative discovered a realistic need
to create a place to store all the massive amounts of information being collected. Most
original counties assumed the duty of managing both the home page web site and the archive
web site until RootsWeb (RW) provided server space for all the file data that exploded
beyond the ability to put everything on a web page for publishing on the Internet. The
initiation of the KyArchives become a national concept. The USGW Archives Project was
born in 1997 and RW provided server space to host all the contributed data
collected."
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At RW, a second directory was established for the USGW Archives Project. This was and
remains a separate project location on the RW server. Hence the FTP (file transfer
protocol) and HTML (hypertext markup language) directories for KY. Over time the USGW
Archives Project became a separate entity all together for reasons too complicated to
cover entirely in this discussion. Forego it to say we are not under the USGenWeb Project
direction as are the CCs, rather we are guided by the USGW Archives Project as archival
volunteers and file managers.
Here's how it all works today...
The CC uses the HTML directories to store the KyGenWeb county web pages. The KYGW Archive
FM uses the FTP directories to store all the archived data files. Please note that some
of the collected data is maintained on the CC web site and some of it is sent to the
archive folders. This obviously provides for some duplication of data or material stored
on the RW server. That is okay and should not be confused with who stores the data or
where. Today, not all of the CCs are the FMs for every county. You should now see that
we actually have two groups of project volunteers maintaining all the material and
submissions to both projects. We will discuss how that is done in more detail with later
discussions.
The USGW Archive directory has two folders for uploading (ftp-ing) files maintained or
managed by the FM.
1) archive_html
This is the folder where you send your web pages that contain the tables of content (TOC).
Files in here include the web site and graphics for the county assigned to you.
2) archive_ftp
This is the folder where you store all the data files collected or submitted to the
county. The files may come from an individual transcriber or contributor and from the
automated forms feature that is activated now for all KY counties. We will discuss that
feature in more detail in another discussion.
NOTE: It is important that all FMs understand the above operation for managing their
respective archive directory folders. Now would be a good time to ask any questions about
those folders or the directory access. Hold on uploading problems until that discussion
is open and we can cover which folders to use and how. Thanks.
Tom Hembrey
SFM, KYARCH