Gary,
Thanks for taking the time to share some of your ideas and "frustrations"
with us.
The "next level" is a wide open topic that raise much discussion by each of
us. I think that each of us should continue to develop the relationships
with our neighboring counties. There is so much cross county activity at
least with some in the western part of the state that you have to know
what's available to researchers in the next county. It's easy to get caught
up in our own county that we forget that there are other counties..... I
routinely cruise through other counties to see what the CC is doing to see
if there is something that I can learn from or to "borrow" and idea from.
We should continue fostering partnerships with the local, regional and
statewide genealogy/historical societies. It's not an easy thing as there
is some mistrust on the part of some of the societies. Alice and I did a
road show for the Jefferson County Society which has opened doors for us to
plan some cooperative projects. That may not be practical for everyone, but
it is an idea. Carol in Somerset has a wonderful project with the cemetery
indexing going on that will benefit the website as well as the local
society. I've seen several others as well.
Page standards is a touchy subject but should be addressed somewhat.
I'd like to see some discussion on the technical feasibility of a cross
county search engine. Many of our counties have loads of data on-line that
is not in the Archives (sorry Joe). Probable not a big deal for the
counties hosted on Rootsweb, but for those of us elsewhere's it would be.
Something that we should consider.
Well, enough rambling. Hope all you Mom's and Grandmom's on the list had a
very happy Mother's Day!
Nate
Nathan Zipfel
PA-Roots Webmaster
http://www.pa-roots.com