Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Tell Rootsweb what you think...

Rootsweb has requested input about their web site - it's databases and services. You can access the survey at http://bigfile.rootsweb.com/newsroom/?p=63

After the Rootsweb message board format revamp debacle back in November/December, this is pretty brave of them!

My humble opinion is that the www.Rootsweb.com suite of products and services are the best FREE genealogy resources on the Internet. I use the following all the time:

1) WorldConnect database - over 479 million names (some duplicated) in over 400,000 databases (some duplicated, all user-submitted, at http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/

2) Rootsweb/Ancestry Message Boards -- over 161,000 boards, with 17 million posts - at http://boards.rootsweb.com/

3) Social Security Death Index - 79 million names - at http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/

4) Free Web pages at Rootsweb - these include the FreePages (user-submitted), regional resources (including genealogy society) and other pages - at http://www.rootsweb.com/~websites/ There is a surname index when you click on a first letter range.

5) USGenWeb Archives searching - at http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/newsearch.htm

6) Rootsweb Mailing List Threaded Archives at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/.

7) Rootsweb Mailing List Search at http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl

8) Surname Resources at Rootsweb at http://resources.rootsweb.com/surnames/

9) US County Resources at Rootsweb at http://resources.rootsweb.com/USA/

10) The Rootsweb Guide to Tracing Famly Trees - articles at http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/

These are all very useful FREE resources that anybody, at any experience level, can use effectively to search for research performed by others. The USGenWeb Archives are the only resource listed that provides transcriptions of primary information, however.

Have you used the Rootsweb databases to their fullest? If not - try them out and you may be pleasantly surprised.

UPDATE: 20 February 2007 7 PM PST: Changed the link to the survey so everyone can use it! Thanks to Chris for the message.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your link to the Rootsweb survey takes you to the thanks for completing the survey. Could you post a link to the front of the survey?