Genealogists collaborate in many ways. In some of these you can use the Internet to get in touch with others having the same research interests, to get answers to questions, to get people to look up books and documents on your behalf, and to search compilations of pedigrees sent in by others.
GENUKI provides links to these collaborations, but does not hold the lists and information. Example 5.1 is an extract from the description of GENUKI to explain this. To see it, from GENUKI home page, choose: Guidance for First-Time Users of These Pages.
| In the main, the information that is provided in GENUKI relates to primary historical material, rather than material resulting from genealogists' ongoing research, such as GEDCOM files. (Its role is thus very different from Internet-based services such as GenServ, Roots Surname List, and the soc.genealogy.surnames.britain / soc.genealogy.surnames.ireland newsgroups with associated FAQ, that help genealogists find others researching the same family, and to exchange their research results with them.) |
| Caption: Example 5.1 from www.genuki.org.uk/org/ in a GENUKI page maintained by Phil Stringer |
On email lists and newsgroups, you join the group (subscribe), and can then send in a question. It is seen by many helpful subscribers, and hopefully you get an answer. There are lists for geographical areas, and for special interests. Often the lists for surname queries are separate from the lists for more general queries.
In a look-up exchange, people send in lists of books, indexes and documents they own, or can readily search in repositories near them. Don't forget it is a collaboration - what can you offer in return?
Surname lists usually include a period and area where another family historian has research interests in the surname, with contact details. The list is either published or searchable. Some of the biggest lists, for example the Genealogists Research Directory (GRD) are published as books or microfiche or CDROM, not on the Internet.
There are large compilations of pedigrees sent in by genealogists and available on CDROM or on the Internet. There is information about these, and other ways of searching for surnames on the Internet, in the author's book Internet for Genealogy. The surname searching chapter of this is available on the Internet at www.hawgood.co.uk/finding. htm . Also see Peter Christian's book Finding Genealogy on the Internet. The links from this are available on the Internet at www.spub.co.uk/fgi/ .
GENUKI has special pages with links to surnames lists and mailing lists, arranged by county. The way in to these has already been given in Example 2.2. From the GENUKI home page, click on the button for "Frequently Asked Questions". Two of these are:
These lead to lists for most counties - sometimes groups of counties. For example, the Gloucestershire Surname List has 14,000 entries. It is run by David Steel in South Australia. I looked for Excell and found two entries, with postal addresses (one in Gloucester, the other in Scotland). Following the link for Cornwall gives a surnames list, complete with location index, compiled by Jon Rees, of the Cornwall and Area-related research interests of a number of Internet and CompuServe users. The next example is an extract from this Cornwall Surnames List . In each case there is a place name, and a date, or range of dates.
| PENGLASE St. Hiliary 1730s Shauna
Hicks PENHAL Godolphin C20 Jane Horwood PENHALE Illogan 1836 Jon Rees PENHALIGON Truro 1860-1900 Barry P. Andrew |
| Caption: Example 5.2. from a Corwall surnames list compiled by John Rees. The original has contact email addresses. Link moved to www.genuki.org.uk/indexes/SurnamesLists.html |
Links to collaboration resources are also given within the individual county pages of GENUKI, and you may find a greater variety here than the email lists and surname lists reached from the GENUKI "Frequently Asked Questions". Example 5.3 shows the "Genealogy" topic in the Lincolnshire county page. To reach this, from the GENUKI home page choose U.K. and Ireland, then England, then Lincolnshire.
Genealogy
|
| Caption: Example 5.3 from www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LIN/ in the GENUKI Lincolnshire pages, maintained by Lou Mills (some changes since the book was published) |
Following the link from example 5.3 to the Lincolnshire Look-up exchange gives a clear explanation of the system, and encourages readers to support Family History Societies who produce many indexes. The first part of example 5.4 is the introduction, the second is an extract from the list of books and indexes on which look-ups are available from volunteers.
| Caption: Example 5.4 |
| Lincolnshire Look-up Exchange Many of the sources used for these lookups are the result of the dedication and hard work of a family history society. Many Family History Societies produce publications related to their county. You may want to consider purchasing your own copy of relevant resources to aid your research. Links to all known on-line publication lists [used to be] found at Family History Society On-Line Catalogues (link no longer works). You may also wish to consider supporting research in this area by joining the society. Details can be found at their respective web-sites or see Genuki's Family History Society listings. The following is a list of reference works on Lincolnshire which volunteers are willing to search for specific entries. To ask for a look-up, please click on the name by the reference. Requests should be specific: give as much detail as you can. Abuses of the kindness of these volunteers will probably cause them to withdraw their names so please don't ask for all references to a common name, or for time-consuming research. Volunteers may or may not be willing to obtain copies of the relevant pages. If they are, expect to reimburse expenses. |
| Oswton Ferry Cemetery MIs (dates
between 1860-1991) Stuart Moverly Coningsby Cemetery Monumental Inscriptions 1885-1893 Nan Clark Over 9000 surnames from Coningsby Parish Registers 1704-1968, including BDM's Nan Clark 1851, 1871, 1881, 1891 Census Surname Indexes - some Horncastle, some Spilsby, some Boston. Nan Clark Horncastle Deanery Marriages - 1754-1812 (Vol. 19,part 1,2) and Horncastle Marriages 1813-1837 (Vol. 19) Nan Clark |
| Caption: Example 5.4 from http://home.wi.rr.com/lincolnshire/lincs.html maintained by Nan Clark on her own web pages (address changed July 2003). Email addresses are in the original, but have been removed from this example. |
Most Family History Societies publish lists of their members interests, so it is worth looking at the web pages for relevant societies. Some are lists of interests similar to those shown from the Cornwall surnames list in example 5.2. Others provide much more information. Dyfed Family History Societies has collected pedigrees from members. Their web site includes details of marriages in those pedigrees, with year, county, name of groom, and name of bride. The membership number of the member submitting the pedigree is shown - both those in the example are from member 2329 - and the instructions say how to get either the email address or postal address of this member.
Example 5.5 From Great Britain & Ireland, choose Societies, and Wales within the page, into Dyfed FHS. This (has moved to) www.dyfedfhs.org.uk/ . (Page layout has changed, previous description was: at the bottom of this page is a door marked TAID (help desk menu). Clicking on this takes you to "The Advice and Information Desk" page which starts "This is a Dyfed FHS members' service but anyone interested in their ancestors, from the counties of Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, and Pembrokeshire, will find these pages of help."
Choose Members' Ancestral Pages from the panel (frame) on the left of the page.
| Caption: Example 5.5 |
Marriage Indexto Members' Dyfed PedigreesThe entries are listed in surname sequence giving the full names of the marriage partners, county code and year of marriage. At least one of the partners was born in Dyfed or the marriage took place there. E-mail addresses, of members identified by their membership #, are accessible from the TAID menu. If no e-mail address is available then contact the Membership Secretary. |
I chose letter "A" from a menu and was shown:
822 Anthony Margaret 1799 CMN Mansel William 2329 Arthur James 1865 PEM Hicks Eliza 2329 Arthur William 1839 PEM Davies Anna |
| Caption: Example 5.5 formerly from www.westwales.co.uk/dfhs/mpmindex.htm on Dyfed Family History Society web pages |
You may think that joining a GENUKI supporters club would entail mobbing the founders of GENUKI as they drive through Manchester on an open-top bus, but the truth is more prosaic. It is an open email list for news, suggestions and comments about GENUKI, or UK genealogy web pages in general. The method of joining is given on the web at http://sentinel.mcc.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/genuki-sc . You won't be asked for money. GENUKI is free, and maintainers are volunteers.
The success of GENUKI comes from the large number of people who maintain pages now or have done in the past. And to continue the success it needs more people to contribute. You don't have to be a web publishing expert or run your own web site, if you can use a word processor you can help GENUKI. The requirement and background are explained in the page reached by choosing Guidance for Potential Contributors to These Pages from the GENUKI home page. The three parts of example 5.6 are extracts (edited to make the web addresses visible on the printed page).
| GENUKI Help Wanted There are a number of high level areas on the GENUKI pages marked **Job Vacancy** where we currently have pages with minimal information and no-one with direct responsibility for their development. We would like more volunteers to come forward to maintain these pages and preferably host them. More information about what this involves is available at www.genuki.org.uk/org/guide.html. If you want to volunteer or have more questions about adopting an area, then please contact Brian Randell (email Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk) or Phil Stringer via his web page at http://sentinel.mcc.ac.uk/~zzassps/ |
| Caption: Example 5.6 part 1 at www.genuki.org.uk/org/helpus.html |
| GENUKI is hosted and maintained by a number of people each looking after their own section but producing pages with a common structure and "look and feel". This means that browsers of the pages can easily find their way around and locate the information they want rather like you do in a library. We achieve this by having a set of standards at at www.genuki.org.uk/org/standards.html. which we all agree to follow. There are also a number of people willing to help and offer advice on producing WWW pages for GENUKI. |
| Caption: Example 5.6 part 2 |
| If you want to provide additional information for an area of GENUKI that already has a maintainer then please contact them directly. The maintainers of each county can be seen on the information providers page at www.genuki.org.uk/org/providers.html . We don't just need people to take on whole counties in GENUKI, we need volunteers to develop more parish pages and to provide more topic pages (detailed guidance on a particular subject) for all levels of GENUKI (national, down to county and parish) - see www.genuki.org.uk/org/guide.html . If you think you can help, if you have local knowledge which you could share with others, or if you can think of something that would be a useful addition to the pages, please contact the relevant maintainer. Original transcriptions of local source material such as Census Returns or Parish Registers are always welcome, provided that any required permissions have been obtained. |
| Caption: Example 5.6 part 3 |
End of Chapter 5 of GENUKI Book by David Hawgood. Amended 16 Nov 2008
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