USGenWeb: Difference between revisions

As I told Leland at the conference - RootsWeb doesn't own the Project nor does the Project own RootsWeb. Admittedly the close relationship between the two entities these past 10 years makes it difficult, sometimes, to distinguish between the two, but they are two completely separate groups. <br>Karen Isaacson and her husband, Dr. Brian Leverich, were early internet users and family historians. Around 1995 they became concerned with the direction genealogy on the web was taking. Free server space was rapidly disappearing and existing genealogy information was disappearing right along with it; the first commercial genealogy site, Ancestry, had staked out a claim on the web; and John Wilson's surname list, the ROOTS-L list and Cliff Manis' hundred of genealogy files lost their space on the North Dakota University server. Karen and Brian decided that rather than lose all of this they would find space on their own servers for them. Karen and Brian formed RootsWeb and the files and lists were moved to RootsWeb's servers, <br>In 1996 when it looked as if the fledging USGenWeb would flounder because of lack of money for server space, RootsWeb stepped in and gave those early sites a home. Ten years later the majority of the USGenWeb Project's sites are still hosted, free of charge, by RootsWeb. <br>In mid 1997 Larry Stephen's lists were hit hard by spammers, so hard that a couple of times the university's computer went down. Larry needed to find a home for his hundreds of lists and Rootsweb agreed to accept the lists and they were moved to the Rootsweb servers. <br>From 1995 until 2000, Karen and Brian managed to support Rootsweb through donations but the time came when the USGenWeb Project, the lists and other sites on the Rootsweb server could no longer be supported by donations; and in 2000 Rootsweb merged with MyFamily.com (Ancestry). The understanding was, and is, that, unless there is a sound business reason not to, RootsWeb will continue to host the websites of the USGenWeb Project, the Project's Special Projects and email lists free of charge.<br>Today Karen and Brian again have a major presence on the web with their Linkpendium site (http://www.linkpendium.com) containing thousand of links to genealogical and historical sites set up by state and county.  

The Project owns nothing that can be sold or taken over. The USGenWeb Project is an association of volunteers and each volunteer agrees to his or her website being a part of the Project, but the Project doesn't "own" the sites.  

That has been explained above, but to summarize: It is the individual volunteers who spend the necessary hours to make information available on-line and offer it freely because of their love for the hobby of genealogy. All of the volunteers of the Project are first and foremost family historians and they themselves use the Project sites in their own research. The more information available the better it is for all of us. The Project is, on a very large scale, what genealogy is all about, and has always been about - freely sharing.  

From its very beginning the Project's websites have been maintained by volunteers and each volunteer, while adhering to a few Project standards, has been free to design his or her own site. These differences bother some people but for most visitors the differences are enjoyable.  

Once again it’s because the sites are maintained by volunteers. Some people who host a county site live within the county and have access to a wealth of information, while others live across the country and have to find copyright-free material to add and/or depend on visitors to donate information to the site.<br>Some counties are relatively new, for example, OK didn't become a state until 1907. Other counties are small or sparsely populated and there aren't many records.  

=== THANK YOU ===