Alan
E. Mann, AG
fhfair@alanmann.com Accredited
Genealogist
www.alanmann.com/articles prepared January 2005
Message Boards, Mailing Lists,
and Newsgroups
The Internet has been tremendously useful
bringing together people with common interests. There are several reasons why
the Internet has done it so successfully:
¨
Electronic
documents (whether narrative texts or record transcripts) have the advantage of
being searchable by computer. The Internet greatly simplifies the process of
finding names, places or topics within a document, magazine, or article because
of the “find” or “search” function of your programs.
¨
The
Internet is an online community. Unlike traditional print, or even postal
services, information made available on the Internet is available worldwide
minutes after being placed on the Net.
¨
Email
allows for almost immediate response. Email is a feature of the Internet. Long
distance collaboration used to be either costly (by phone) or so slow as to
allow interest or memory to wane between communications. Email solves these
problems.
¨
Documents
can be scanned and emailed as attachments or posted to a web site for all to
see–at little or no cost (other than the scanner).
¨
A
combination of GEDCOM and email (or web site) allows for immediate sharing of
complete families of information.
¨
Research
coordination takes a great deal of effort. By using services based on the
Internet, much of the work can be done automatically by computer. Robots check
to see if email addresses are still valid, create indexes, forward messages,
maintain mailing lists, update mailing lists, and many more of the functions
that are costly and limited previous coordination attempts.
There
are many ways the Internet can help us with our family history research. This
hour, we will focus on communication assistance. This session talks about
research coordination and research collaboration--two basic ways the Internet
can help you communicate with others. Coordination is working with known
relatives or finding relatives you never knew you had (or lost touch with).
Collaboration is getting help from someone other than a relative.
Research Coordination. There are a number of
strategies that can lead to finding relatives. The basic things you can do are
·
Use
a research coordination service. Roots Surname List at http://rsl.rootsweb.com is the best. You
can leave the names you are researching and search the list of names left by
others. Adding a time period and migration path make this source highly
successful. Search over a million surnames—check each surname in your ancestry.
·
Use
Message boards. There are two basic types:
Ø
Message boards (or Query
boards).
Leave queries about an ancestor at various sites, such as USGenWeb,
WorldGenWeb, etc.
You can see a list of query databases at www.cyndislist.com/queries.htm . Check queries left
by others.
Ø
Online message forums, such as www.GenForum.com, www.FamilyHistory.com, and others.
·
Use
Mailing lists (see just below).
Getting Help from
Others.
There are several tools for getting help from others. These include
·
Mailing Lists are where you send a
query (message) about an ancestor or research problem to a group of people who
have expressed an interest in a particular surname, region, or topic. The
message is distributed via email to those subscribed to the list. Any of those
who receive it are free to reply—either to the group as a whole or to you
individually. There are many thousands of mailing lists. For a categorized list
of mailing lists, see www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_mail.html.
·
Collaboration Lists are mailing lists
with one important difference—everything is funneled through FamilySearch, so
that your email address is never revealed to anyone else but you can still
communicate. This can help cut down on spam. This is located at www.familysearch.org/Eng/Share/Collaborate/frameset_share.asp.
·
Newsgroups
are where you send a query (message) about an ancestor or research problem to a
group of people who have expressed an interest in a particular surname, region,
or topic. The message is NOT distributed, but stored on the Internet. People
interested have to go on the Internet to check the newsgroup messages, and can
then reply if they so choose. Newsgroups are few in number, but some prefer to
use this method to avoid excessive email. Check the list of genealogy
newsgroups at www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_use.html.
·
Lookup
Exchanges are where volunteers are willing to look things up for others for
free. The idea is that if you receive a favor from someone else, you should do
something for yet another person, and everyone benefits. There are tens of
thousands of such volunteers and this is an extremely valuable resource. Check
Cyndi’s List of lookup lists at www.cyndislist.com/lookups.htm.
Please
note that you need to follow some basic rules of netiquette (Internet
etiquette) and it helps to know some basic guidelines for genealogical
communication. For information on Netiquette, please visit www.cyndislist.com/internet.htm#Netiquette.
Some basic guidelines are:
·
Use
capitalization for SURNAMES in a genealogical message. This helps them stand
out for quick scanning.
·
Always
fill out the subject of a message or email. The subject should be short, but
include name, place, and date. A good subject line might be:
John
Henry ADAMS,
·
Sending
a message is called posting. Review others’ messages for general style and content
before posting your own query.
·
> is used to denote
migration. Thus TN>AR>TX means the family moved from
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©Copyright 1999-2005 by Alan E. Mann, AG. All rights
reserved. Written permission to reproduce all or part of this syllabus material
in any format, including photocopying, data retrieval, or the Internet, must be
secured in advance from the copyright holder.