Robert and all,
Even though I think that link to the other census project should appear
on the OHGenWeb site, bottom line is that that site is Sandy's and not
ours. She became the admin when she took over as SC and the content is
strictly up to her. We can make suggestions but she is the one that
controls what appears or not.
If on the other hand we pass a bylaw that requires that the membership
of OHGenWeb can have an active voice in what appears or not then she
wold have to listen to us but then we would have to vote on every little
change she makes which would probably end up with the site becoming
dormant as no one would want to have to go through committee to make any
changes to their site.
There are certain things she is required to do by USGenWeb and those
have been done. Since neither of the census projects are part of
USGenWeb, anymore, inclusion of a link to them is completely voluntary
for any GenWeb admin. USGenWeb only has a sub project for census images
right now. Here is what they say on their projects page about the census
transcription projects:
"The Census Projects - There are two census projects. Both call
themselves USGenWeb Census Projects, but neither are associated with The
USGenWeb Project."
I don't know how many others have noticed but there certainly has been a
lack of participation in the transcription projects and one reason is
more than likely that more people are getting access to online census
images either through Heritage Quest or some other provider. I for one
have stopped doing transcriptions for my own county as there is not much
interest. I have even volunteered to do lookups and have not gotten many
requests which tells me people are finding them on their own. I for one
would rather see the original image rather than some person's
transcription especially in cases where the text is in question.
So, all you can do is suggest that Sandy include that link and if she
doesn't want to, I wouldn't beat a dead horse.
Denny Shirer - drdx(a)neo.rr.com - Canton, OH
Muskingum County, OHGenWeb -
A year ago, on Apr. 25, 2005, in response to the SC's public
request for
feedback on the OHGenWeb state page, I posted the following suggestion
on this list:
... I'm not too keen on the one census project's files being given top
billing while the other is just termed "more census transcriptions." You
could put them on a more equal footing if you listed them consecutively
with something like:
Ohio Census Transcriptions (
rootsweb.com)
Ohio Census Transcriptions (
us-census.org) ...
See
http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ifetch2?/u1/textindices/O/OHGEN+20
05+11862446852+F for that message.
The SC response to that simple suggestion was to delete the link to the
USGenWeb Census Project at
www.us-census.org altogether. That made it
very clear where she stood on the issue. Even so, two days later on
Apr. 27, 2005, I posted the following on this list:
... I am extremely disappointed to see that you deleted the link to the
Ohio census data at
ftp://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/oh/
entirely rather than considering the suggestion to merely put the links
to the two census projects on equal footing as:
* Ohio Census Transcriptions (
rootsweb.com)
* Ohio Census Transcriptions (
us-census.org)
There are census transcriptions in each that do not appear in the other,
and Ohio researchers certainly lose out not having a link to both
projects ...
See
http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ifetch2?/u1/textindices/O/OHGEN+20
05+12102485407+F for that message.
Even Maggie Stewart who heads up the USGenWeb Census Project located on
rootsweb.com responded that day in support with:
... Also I agree with Robert that both census projects should have equal
billing. The researcher should be able to see all the postings. I'm
partial to my own project on Rootsweb but this is about the researcher
...
See
http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ifetch2?/u1/textindices/O/OHGEN+20
05+12112488885+F
Maggie was correct. It is all about the researcher, and without
acknowledgment the link did reappear for a very short time before
disappearing again altogether. It was obvious that nothing was going to
happen, so I completely gave up asking, and the link has been absent for
nearly a year.
Now, HeritageQuest, part of ProQuest, a for-profit company to which
libraries pay a lot of money, not only gets a link on our state page at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohgenweb/statelinks.htm, but that is followed
by a glowing endorsement (i.e., "these are the best scanned census pages
I have ever seen") and a whole page of instructions at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohgenweb/freecensus.html detailing how to get a
library card through Columbus Metropolitan Library to access the census
images that HeritageQuest makes available.
Meanwhile, the free and not-for-profit USGenWeb Census Project at
http://www.us-census.org/ (that also happens to be hosted on
http://www.usgennet.org, a nonprofit historical-genealogical web hosting
service) gets no link at all on either the state or national resources
pages alongside the link for the USGenWeb Census Project located on
rootsweb.com.
The elimination of the link for the USGenWeb Census Project at
http://www.us-census.org/ has never really made any sense. It makes
even less sense now in light of the addition of the HeritageQuest link.
Robert Bremer
bremerr(a)oclc.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Sandra Quinn [mailto:ohgen@alltel.net]
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 6:35 PM
To: OHGEN-L(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: [OHGEN] Heritage Census Available for all
http://www.ohiohistory.org/resource/archlib/
click on heritage quest
then on census
Now everyone can access this great resource, not just Ohio residents!
Sandy