In a nutshell?
Uploading more raw data online.
Censuses are great - but there are some of us (like me) with counties
whose first extant census is 1900. (ugh!!)
So I'm looking at old newspapers, myself. I think that's a really
interesting area which provides all sorts of neat stuff for
researchers.
The State Library has a great list online where you can find out
exactly which papers have been microfilmed for your area:
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/tss/newspape.htm
(go to
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/ncnp/intro.htm to check
what's been filmed for your county)
For example, here's what's filmed for Vance:
http://lightning.prohosting.com/~ncvance/ncarchives.html#papers
Maps are another wonderful and greatly needed resource to try to get
online - especially OLD maps. NCArchives and the LDS often have these
on film - and often they can be printed and scanned in.
Cemeteries are great, too. You can get the film of the WPA surveys,
transcribe and upload that - then ask for folks who live or visit the
area to "add to" or "update," since those surveys only contain
pre-1913 monuments - and in my experience, the info contained is
sometimes wrong (it was also sometimes "supplemented" by information
supplied by families/desendants - info NOT on the stones, and not
always correct! <G>)
Info about the WPA films (including LDS film numbers) for ALL North
Carolina counties) can be found here, for anyone interested:
http://lightning.prohosting.com/~ncvance/data/LDSfilms.txt
Anyway, more and more online data is my idea of the "future" of our
project, Terria.
What's yours?
-Sandy
====================
At 11:13 PM -0400 08/30/00, Terria Baynor wrote:
Sandy,
What are your views of the future of our project? Where would you like to see
us go? What would you like to see happen here? I know you will
have some good
ideas! Please share them with us.
Terria