Genealogy Forum NEWS
June 1999

From the Top

I must say it is nice to be home in my own bed after getting a chance to meet so many of you at the California Genealogical Convention in Pleasanton, Ca and at the National Genealogical Society Conference in the States held this year in Richmond. I really look forward to these events because it gives me a chance to match the faces to the online names that I have grown to know so well.

GFSChuck@aol.com points out that five years ago when we started attending these events, we would ask people if they had a computer and most would say no but they were thinking about it.

• The next year we asked if they had a computer, most said yes but they did not have a modem hooked up yet.
• The next year they had modems but had not yet tried AOL.
• Now we hear most people use AOL but, believe it or not, some AOL members haven't discovered our Genealogy Forum yet!

Let's continue to try to get the word out about the wonderful resources in our Genealogy Forum. We get millions of hits every month, which is good since genealogy research works best when we collaborate with others. The Golden Gate Genealogy Forum found on AOL is your local genealogy society from the comfort of your own home. It allows you to communicate via chat rooms and message boards with people all over your country and all over the world. We all have to become evangelists for your Forum. Tell your friends that all they need to do is to go to AOL keyword ROOTS to find the best genealogy stop in cyberspace.

The Golden Gate Genealogy Forum continues to grow and is renewed by the efforts of over 140 volunteer staffers who love genealogy and love helping others! A classic example of that is the new Southern Genealogy area that many of the staff and members like you help build. It will make looking for your southern US roots just that much easier.

In the coming months you will also notice that our web site will start growing and that many of the areas that you have grown to love will be moving out there. A major step is the addition of the Genealogy Forum NEWS which debuts on the web with the June 1999 issue. Now the great content you've been enjoying for years can now be shared with a growing number of people. Bravo to the editors GFSCarol@aol.com, DearMYRTLE@aol.com, GFTKim@aol.com, GFSDiana@aol.com, GFSGary@aol.com and GFSWaffle@aol.com for a job well done!

In months to come, our new Web Master, GFSBrenda@aol.com, will be directing the move of other parts of our forum to the web which will allow us to use the improved capabilities of HTML and it will give us a wider audience. We feel the message boards and the chat rooms offered by AOL are far superior to those on the web, so those items will remain in the existing format for now.

In the near future we will be working with our sponsors at Broderbund to help add a feature that we have long wanted. They will help us build a search engine for our extensive collection of GEDCOM files. Our current search only allows a limited search by surname. This new search will also allow us to search by given name.

As you can see we have a lot of new and exciting things happening in your forum in the coming weeks and months. If you want to be a part of this adventure, contact GFSVKN@aol.com, and let us know where your talents lie in the genealogy field. Hopefully we can find a way to let you help others. We are a mostly volunteer organization and our staff all comes to us from the AOL community.

George Ferguson
Genealogy Forum Leader

BACK to Cover Page - GFSNEWS 6/99

© 1999-2005 Graphics By Carol, All Rights Reserved
Content © 1999-2005 GFNEWS, a monthly publication of the Golden Gates Genealogy Forum, Inc. of Armada, MI. The Editors welcome your ideas and articles, success stories, favorite genealogy research tips, comments and suggestions.