Our goals are further being decided for us by RootsWeb: providing addresses
and locations. See below:
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Tharp <det(a)fn.net>
To: USGENWEB-ALL-L(a)rootsweb.com <USGENWEB-ALL-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Date: Thursday, June 10, 1999 5:10 PM
Subject: Re: [USGENWEB-ALL-L] Improving Our Ability to Serve the Public
At 02:22 PM 06/10/99 -0500, you wrote:
<BIG SNIP>
>>>These "county cluster" resources are not a replacement for the
USGenWeb
>>county pages. There is no intention to provide the type of information
>>that USGenWeb provides such as addresses of libraries, addresses of court
>>houses, locations of cemeteries, etc. It will not provide assistance in
>>locating reference material for the county. It will simply provide a
single
>>point of entry to ROOTSWEB resources.
The above paragraph says it all. Your county web site has been reduced to
providing addresses and locations. Every bit of the information mentioned
above can be put on one state home page and save the researcher a great
deal
of time. Your web site will no longer be needed except as a link to
rootsweb
and a plea for money.
If the present trend continues, i.e., taking material off the county web
sites and putting them on national pages, why would a researcher visit your
page, maybe once, but not twice. Do you really want to waste your time
maintaining a web site just for that? Or, do you wish to take back your
counties importance to USGW and the researchers? How, by putting surnames,
queries, raw material on your web sites. Yes, more work for you, but we
didn't join this organization for convenience.
We developed our web sites so that researchers seeking information could
find the information on our county pages. I was never told that links to
rootsweb were all that would be needed on our web sites.
Don
det(a)fn.net