IIGS™ Newsletter - November 1998
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IIGS™ Newsletter - November 1998
How would you feel and what would you do if plans in the making for over six months for an IIGS™ project were finalized and presented, but it all went FLOP? I suppose you could give up and cancel the project, but ...
The IIGS™ MRI is a good idea and I'm not ready to give up just yet. The problem apparently has been twofold: too little publicity at the wrong time (end of summer vacation) and no understanding of what the MRI is.
What is the IIGS™ MRI? Why is it called that? What does it do?
The MRI Project owes its name to an e-mail message from General Services Team Leader Barbara Brown. The acronym "MRI" means this: "M" stands for the Members of IIGS™. The "R" stands for Research. And the "I" stands for Interests. So, "MRI" means Members' Research Interests. It had been projected that the MRI would be a product of the IIGS™ Research Coordination Team but no RCT members were able to invest their time in the MRI.
Soapbox On
And I must, parenthetically, add that the RCT is yet another great idea with no volunteers to staff it. If you are interested in helping others around the Internet, -or- with the DOs and DON'Ts of genealaogical research, -or- in participating in an IIGS™ members-only chat list where research questions are discussed please join the RCT List and pitch in to help rejuvenate the Research Coordination Team. We NEED you!
Soapbox OffIt's interesting that the acronym "MRI" is also used in the medical field when discussing magnetic resonance imaging, a computer-assisted method of viewing cross-sections of the human anatomy. That's what the IIGS™ MRI is all about, too. It provides a cross-sectional view of IIGS™ membership and the surnames they are researching. At least, it will as more members contribute their data. Like a medical MRI, the IIGS™ MRI permits browsers to view -inside- IIGS™, to see who is there and what is being researched. And it costs -you-, as a member of IIGS™, nothing but some time to compile your entry or fill out the MRI Data Collection Form at
http://www.iigs.org/queries/mri/mriform.htm The MRI was designed to be responsive to IIGS™ members' desires for privacy -- from no exposure to great detail such as your postal address, phone and fax numbers. and any desired level of privacy in between. The submitter controls what information about them is mounted on the web. The MRI is voluntary. If you do not wish to have your name on the web as a member of IIGS™, don't submit any information. Such a decision will not affect your IIGS™ membership. Some may wish only to list their name and e-mail address, so that is the minimum entry. Other members might wish to advertize the surnames they are researching and/or their genealolgy pages. To keep the size of the database manageable, individual members are limited to submitting only 15 surnames of major interest and five web page URLs.
When the MRI (under another name) was first proposed, it was to be a way for IIGS™ members to list their web pages so other members of IIGS™ could find them. The IIGS™ Web Ring was organized as a way to make IIGS™ members' URLs available, but there was no alphabetical member index or alphabetical file of surnames. All you can do is browse from member site to member site and look around.
That's where the MRI has its greatest value. In the MRI, all submitting members' names are presented in alphabetical order and all the surnames of interest are maintained in a single alphabetical list (including some cross-referecing of alternate spellings) pointing to the member who reported that surname. The MRI is an instant indexed view of Who's Who in IIGS™ and what everyone's researching. At least, that was the intention, as it was expected that most IIGS™ members would desire to advertize themselves as members and list their surnames of interest to catch other browsers' attention.
So where is this most excellent database located? Don't laugh. You will find the MRI as part of the Queries Team pages. And why is that? Because the Queries Team already had experience with pages generated by CCHelper (the old International Queries ), and the program CCHelper was the perfect vehicle to present the data collected for the MRI. You can see an article about CCHelper in a previous issue of this newsletter. Basically, you input the collected data (after a bit of editing for consistency), and CCHelper automatically generates web pages which provide the data on three integrated sets of pages:
- an alphabetical listing of contributing IIGS™ members (Member pages)
- a combined alphabetical listing of submitted surnames (Surname pages)
- a chronologically-organized (by date of input) set of pages showing each member's individual entry (Query pages) where 'query' is interpreted as each member's list of surnames of interest with some general dates and locations) such as:
- submitted by Wally Garchow on Monday, August 10, 1998
- COUPLAND - 1811-1900 Lincolnshire, England to Ohio, USA
- SLADE - 1650-1900 Maryland to Georgia to Ohio, USA
- YORK - 1785-1900 Georgia to Ohio to Indiana, USA
"How do you use the MRI?" you ask. "Good question," says I.
Since there are three sets of integrated pages produced by CCHelper, there are three methods of using the MRI. You can browse the actual MRI site and see how these sets of pages work at http://www.iigs.org/queries/mri/mrientry.htm
- You can take a 'hit-or-miss' approach and browse each of the member's individual entries (Query pages) to see what surnames during which time periods and geographical locations they are researching. Since this section of the MRI is organized chronologically, you will jump around a bit trying to find anything specific. This method is best used when you have visited the MRI before and want only to see what has been added since the last time you checked.
- You start with the pages on which contributing members are alphabetically arranged (Member pages). In this way you see each member's name, possibly where they live (optional contributed data), what surnames they are researching, and their web pages, if any. This section is also where members' e-mail address are displayed. This method is useful when you want to locate a particular individual you know is a member of IIGS™. However, be aware that if the individual never submitted to the MRI, you will not find them. But maybe you will find someone else whom you were not aware was a member of IIGS™!
- You browse the pages alphabetically by surname (Surname pages). This method permits you to match -your- surname interests against other members of IIGS™. It also helps you see where various IIGS™ members are researching the same names and how many contributing members are researching each indexed surname. As more members contribute, more researchers will show for each surname and the numbers of total surnames will climb.
Thanks to Patty Lindsay (author of CCHelper), there is another positive side to the MRI. Not only can individual members of IIGS™ list themselves and their major research interests on the web for browsers to find, but by using CCHelper to present the data, the surnames collected in the MRI can be easily added to Patty's Surname Helper database. Surname Helper is a massive project hosted by the Rootsweb Genealogical Data Cooperative (which hosts IIGS™). International in scope, it provides surname indexing across -all- pages registered with the service as well as surname indexes for individual sites. Anyone researching a particular surname can use the search engine at the Surname Helper site and be directed to the precise place on registered web pages where that surname is mentioned. While it was initially designed for indexing surnames in USGenWeb queries, you now find many other kinds of records indexed, such as marriages, births, deaths, obituaries, newspapers, deeds, naturalizations, military service records, etc.
I must confess that I have not yet added the MRI to Surname Helper. I was waiting until I had a significant number of new surnames. It is my next project, and I will be re-organizing how Surname Helper identifies IIGS™. However, you can see the way Surname Helper works by accessing the Index to the old International Queries.
When I add the new index module for the IIGS™ MRI to Surname Helper, a browser looking for ANDERSONs in Georgia may also find that IIGS™ has a member researching that surname. It will greatly enhance your chances of locating other researchers. In addition, it will bring new browsers to the IIGS™ site and introduce them to the membership as well as IIGS™ itself. To that end, I have made the logo link to the main IIGS™ page more visible by increasing the border size and telling folks that clicking on the logo will take them to the main page. I have done this on all the pages in the Queries directory which are generated by CCHelper.
Let me recap the benefits of the MRI to individual members and to IIGS™ (taken from the MRI web page)
- Purpose of Members' Research Interests:
- To provide a benefit of membership in IIGS™
- To introduce IIGS™ members to each other and the International genealogical web browsing community
- To mount members' e-mail addresses so that others may contact them
- To find where IIGS™ members reside around the world
- To assist members in advertising their genealogical web pages
- To index those surnames of -primary- interest in the members' individual research
- To announce the collective research interests of the members of IIGS™ in an alphabetized index
- To send those collected surname research interests to Surname Helper where they will be found by International researchers who will be pointed to the IIGS™ pages
Have I convinced you yet that submitting your data to the MRI does both -you- and IIGS™ a favor? If you still have questions about MRI, ask me. If you see the value in contributing your information to the IIGS™ MRI, please follow the steps outlined below.
To participate in the MRI, you MUST ...
The minimum MRI entry is a member's name and contact information. Members should submit their data using the
- JOIN the International Internet Genealogical Society
- Provide your name and
- Identify yourself as an IIGS™ member by using the same e-mail address you did when joining the Society (yes, we will be checking!)
MRI Data Collection Form Please be patient while waiting for your entries to appear on the MRI pages. All submissions must be checked in the Membership Database and edited/input by hand. See you soon in MRI!