Greetings, all! I have been thinking lately about a project that should be done for Albemarle County, VA, and could probably be done for other counties in Virginia (even other states). This will be a little long, so if you're not interested, please hit delete now, and save yourself some time. :) I think that Rev. Edgar Woods' book "History of Albemarle County" should be fed into a database (FTW, PAF, AQ, or similar), and posted on Rootsweb for people to search. I mean putting the people into the database, and perhaps some of the text into the notes of those people. This would be the minimum extent of the project, but I have grander visions for what it could become. I would like to see links to photos of tombstones, links to drawings/photos of the people in the database, email addresses for researchers in the notes, etc. I have some example links for you here, from my project for my home county (Nemaha Co., KS): NMKS Photos homepage: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~nemahaks/index.html Clay Goodman (my grandfather) photo page: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~nemahaks/ClayGoodman.html Clay Goodman database page: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=rlg-ks-nemaha&id=I3703 Jim Goodman tombstone photo: http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~cemphoto/ks/nemaha/wettown/wetmore/wtmr0897.jpg Maurice Manoah Pleasants (Albemarle County resident) tombstone: http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/va/vastones/albemarle/pleasants/ALB00004.jpg This can be an easy project to start, but when you start adding censuses, newspapers, tombstones, etc., it can take a lot of work on one person's part, because everything has to go into one database to be uploaded. Does anyone know of a collaborative software that could be used by many people over the Internet make this easier? Anyway, to get this started, one person would have to request a database space from Rootsweb, and maintain the central database. Lots of people could create a database of the family they are interested in (Goodman, for me, for example), and upload a GEDCOM to the central person, who would just import all the databases into the central database. That would work fine for just the families in the book, but would break down quickly as we start expanding outside the book, because of the need to match/merge the gedcoms coming into the database. I am currently doing this type of a project for Nemaha Co., KS, and this is the standard note I send to people who are interested in sending info: "My project is to find everyone who has lived in Nemaha Co., KS at any time, and make that info available to other researchers. I have been using open sources for my data (censuses, newspapers, tombstone data, etc.). I also accept data from other researchers, and include their name and email address in the notes of each individual, naming them as Family Researchers, so others can contact them directly." I limit the info I include in the database to people who actually lived in the county, plus one generation born outside the county; otherwise the database would grow into the millions. After 5.25 years of work, I now have over 68,435 people entered, and expect that I will hit 200,000 before I finish. Albemarle County is much bigger, and much older, than Nemaha Co., KS, and will have a _lot_ more people. This could be a massive project, if carried out fully. If anyone is interested in jumping on this and running, or if something like this is already in the works, let me know. If anyone would be willing to do a family or two from the book, let me know, and I will coordinate that (if someone doesn't want the job). :) Roger Goodman Springfield, VA To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html