Questions regarding guidelines
and helpful information please see:
State Coordinator -
Jeff Kemp
If you would like to adopt a MSGenWeb County please read
County Coordinator Guide
and
then please fill out the
MSGenWeb CC Adoption
Application
form.
Including Information
for Volunteers,
County/Special Sites,
and Submitting Documents and Files
Adopted by MSGenWeb December, 1999
Last Revision: 02 Apr. 2020 - Updated URL's, email addresses and
Representatives names.
Welcome to
the MSGenWeb County Volunteer Help page! If you are considering adopting a
MSGenWeb County, or if you are already a coordinator, this page is must-reading.
Table
Of Contents
Ready to Help?
Email the
state coordinator
msgwsc@gmail.com with the following
information:
Name Name
Address
Phone
Email
County Of Interest
Why You Are Interested in that County
Experience with Web Page Design & Creation
Other USGenWeb or other online genealogy project involvement (if
applicable)
We THANK YOU
for your support of the MSGenWeb Project, and look forward to your joining us!
Please contact
State Coordinator regarding questions,
suggestions, or comments about this website.
Basic Requirements
To
be a successful MSGenWeb County Coordinator, you will need:
-
A knowledge of the
county/area you will be coordinating.
-
A desire and willingness to assist
researchers who visit your county website.
NOTE: MSGenWeb does not require or expect that its coordinators engage
in personal research or lookups for visitors! The best way to assist
researchers is to provide as much fresh and appropriate online information
and links as is possible. We help researchers, but we do not do the
research for them.
-
A basic knowledge
HTML page coding and design, OR access to and ability to use Webpage
editing software such as Netscape Composer, Microsoft Front Page,
Macromedia Dreamweaver, etc.
-
Access to reliable
server space. There are many "free" servers available.
You may use the server of your choice as long as the server is not
publicly affiliated with, or linked to, adult sites or other
inappropriate material or links. It is preferred that sites
are hosted on servers which are free of pop-up advertising. MSGenWeb
sites must be non-secular and "family friendly." Most sites are
hosted at
http://www.msgw.org which is the official host for MSGenWeb.
-
Time to devote to your county page.
Researchers are looking for fresh and frequently updated information on your
pages. The weekly time required can range from two to twenty hours,
depending on the time you have available, and your degree of enthusiasm.
-
Ability to make
initial new coordinator name changes to the county pages, to upload changed
pages, and to officially take over the county within 30 days of acceptance.
-
Willingness to grant minimum 30 days
notice should you decide to give up your county. (We hope you never do!)
Outgoing County Coordinators will be asked to assist with transferring the
county to the replacement County Coordinators whenever possible.
NOTE: You do NOT need to live in
the county you are hosting.
You will be
joining a fine team of County Coordinators dedicated to making the MSGenWeb
Project the best resource for those seeking to research their Mississippi
ancestors.
MSGenWeb Structure
-
State Index Page - 1 (one) State
Coordinator, 1 (one) Primary Assistant State Coordinator, other Assistant State
Coordinators as deemed appropriate and necessary by the State Coordinator.
County
and Special Project Coordinators may be delinked only by the State Coordinator.
Final
approval of special projects, new Coordinators and Assistant Coordinators rests
with the State Coordinator. Volunteers who apply using an alias name will not be
considered.
There is no
limit on the length of time a State Coordinator may serve, or the number of
times a former State Coordinator may run for re-election. An election for
a new State Coordinator will be held upon resignation of the current State
Coordinator, or upon the call for an election by a minimum of 25% of the county
and special project coordinators, and their assistants.
-
Special Projects, e.g. Confederate
page, State History, etc. - Limit 1 (one) Coordinator, 1 (one) Assistant
Coordinator if desired.
-
County Sites - Limit 1 (one) County
Coordinator, 1 (one) Assistant County Coordinator if desired.
-
Limit of 4 (four) counties/special
project sites, or combination, per individual.
NOTE:
A Local Special Project or County may utilize additional non-MSGenWeb member
"helpers" if desired. Helpers will not be subbed to the State mailing
lists, and will not be included in the voter list.
MSGenWeb Mailing Lists for County Coordinators
MSGenWeb Requirements for
County and Special Project Websites
There are a few basic requirements that every county website must meet in
order to be associated with The MSGenWeb Project
NOTE:
The purpose of MSGenWeb is to provide material and assistance to researchers.
To accomplish our goal, all MSGenWeb sites must be properly maintained and
updated on a regular basis, and the coordinator must provide a viable email ID
to the researchers. A project site that has remained unattended for 3 or
more months, or which contains numerous broken links and graphics, or which does
not comply with one or more of the basic requirements of MSGenWeb and/or
USGenWeb, or a coordinator who is unresponsive to email is subject to removal
from the project, by the State Coordinator. Whenever possible, a minimum
30 days notice will be given in order to grant the Coordinator an opportunity to
bring the site into compliance.
Logos
Your main
index page must display the USGenWeb and MSGenWeb logos of your choice.
MSGenWeb Logos
To save the logos below to
your computer, place cursor on image, right click, and choose "Save Image
As..."
Also for County
Coordinator use are other backgrounds & graphics please
click here
USGenWeb Logos
may be acquired at:
http://www.usgenweb.org/volunteers/logos.shtml
NOTE:
For your protection, it is STRONGLY recommended that at least one of the above
logos and a link back to your index page be placed on every page within your
county. (This is because of search engines or links from other sites
that might take a visitor directly to a page within your county, aka Deep
Linking, and even display your page within a frame on the hosting server.)
Mandatory Links
The
index (home) page must have a link to the following pages:
MSGenWeb State
Page -
http://www.msgw.org/
USGenWeb
Project National Page -
http://www.usgenweb.org/
Name/ID of
current State Coordinator
Name/ID of
current County Coordinator
The Name/ID of
Assistant County Coordinator, if you have an assistant, is desired,
though not mandatory.
Notice of Last
Update [Date]
Either
the Index Page or a What's New page (if one is used) must contain the date the
site was last updated.
Example: "
Last updated on Monday, 25-Nov-20 21:09:04 PDT"
HTML code: Modified: <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"-->
Or manually entered: "Last updated on Monday, 25 Nov, 2009"
Query Page
Every County must provide
pages for submitted queries, or a link to a county appropriate message board,
such as
GenForum. If queries are maintained manually, the query page should be
updated within one to two weeks upon receipt of the query. Each query
should be dated.
In order to retain the integrity
of the county queries, it is highly recommended that coordinators keep an eye on
the submissions to be sure that the query is relative to your particular county,
that it is intelligible, and that the E-Mail address of the submitter is
functional. We recommend you either accept the
system that is in place when you take the county, if possible, or that you look
around and carefully explore the options, before you make changes.
NOTE: At no
time are "old" queries to be discarded, unless they are found to be
inappropriate for the county, or if the e-mail link is no longer current.
Submitted
queries belong to the submitter, and may be removed/altered at any time at the
request of the submitter.
USGenWeb Requirements
In addition to MSGenWeb
Requirements, the parent group USGenWeb Project has a set of minimum
requirements and guidelines for each County page. These requirements must
be observed, and can be found at:
http://www.usgenweb.org/volunteers/CCguidelines.shtml
Recommendations
While not requirements,
the following suggestions have proven to be especially helpful to County
Coordinators, and to Researchers. We hope you will consider each one.
Recommended
Links
MS City/Town
List
This is a (growing) list of MS
cities and towns, both past and current, and the county in which they reside(d).
It can be very helpful in determining the correct county. It may be placed
on the index page, or query page, or both.
ct-a.htm
Links to
Neighboring Counties and/or States
This courteous act will aid
researchers in finding genealogical information which commonly spills over
current county or state borders. Check the links periodically, in case a
county has been moved to a different server.
The USGenWeb
Project Archives:
http://usgwarchives.org/
The WorldGenWeb
Project:
http://www.worldgenweb.org/
Personal Web
Pages
Add links to personal
non-commercial genealogical websites with connections to your
county.
MSGenWeb State
Online Archives
http://usgwarchives.net/ms/msfiles.htm
Census
Projects:
http://www.us-census.org/
Copyright Notice
It is
highly recommended, for your protection, that all websites and html pages within
the MSGenWeb Project carry the following copyright notice, or something
similar:
"Copyright (Year) by (name of coordinator) - All Rights Reserved"
Counters
Check with your server for
instructions on installing a counter to your index page.
Example:
"You are the 14th visitor since the counter was installed on July 15, 2002.
[Change the date accordingly.]
Suggestions for Additional County
Pages
Address Page
Provide a listing of postal
addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and websites to genealogical or historical
societies, county or municipal offices, and local libraries.
Bibliography of
Published Resources
A listing of local history and
genealogical books and magazines of interest to the researcher.
A good alternative to a lookup
page is a county bibliography page, which provides a list of books and material
available for your county, and where they can be found. If you use a
Bibliography page, it is recommended that you place a notice on the page similar
to the following:
"This
county, MSGenWeb and/or the USGenWeb Project do not necessarily endorse or
recommend the publications listed on this page. The information is listed
solely as a public service to researchers. Neither XX Co, MSGenWeb, the
USGenWeb Project, nor the Webmaster have any special interest or affiliation
with any of the publishers or authors. No guarantees are implied."
Links Page
Links to off site pages that
contain information/material relevant to the county.
Lookup Page
You may
put up a Lookup Page only if you or your volunteers have received permission
from the author or publisher of the material to do so, or if the book or
material is in the public domain and permission is not needed.
It
is strongly suggested that you put the following two USGenWeb Official Policy
statements at the top of any lookup page you should decide to create:
"The USGenWeb Project will not tolerate any copyright violations. Lookup
requests should be limited to one name, or perhaps two if it is a married
couple. Information given will be minimal; for example if it is a cemetery
lookup, the information given will consist of the name of the cemetery and the
dates on the headstone. Please do not ask for 'everybody with X surname' or an
entire family group, or for hard copies to be mailed; the volunteers have been
asked not to comply with such requests".
"Our lookups will extend to searching
a book or other material to see if it would be helpful to you in your research.
Should the book prove useful, we can provide the author's address and ordering
information".
Surnames
A Surnames page can be helpful
to researchers. It is recommended that the surnames be linked to the queries,
when possible.
What's New
A dated and conveniently
located "What's New" section or page provides an appreciated timesaving service
to visitors to your county. Provide links directly to the new file, so the
researcher doesn't have to look through your web site to find the new file.
Search Engines
On site-search
engines are convenient time-savers for researchers. A few to look into, in
alphabetical order:
FreeFind
- http://www.freefind.com/
Copyright
Considerations
Be sure to read the
USGenWeb Policy
on Copyright.
MSGenWeb will not tolerate copyright violations.
Anything placed on the Internet is
considered published. It belongs to the author or artist who created the
material, unless it resides in the Public Domain (published before 1923), in
which case it may be freely copied.
Non-public domain material may
include notes posted to mailing lists, queries, graphics, transcriptions,
photographs, books, articles, newsletters, etc. In order for this material
to be published on your county pages, written consent must be obtained from the
author/publisher, except for queries. Consent to publish queries is
implied when the query is submitted to the county either directly, or via the
coordinator.
Submitted material posted on the
county pages, including queries, belongs to the submitter. The submitter retains
copyright, and may withdraw the material at any time.
NOTE: On
occasion, Coordinators have been contacted by a researcher re "incorrect"
information found on a submitted file. The CC is NOT to change or alter
any submitted material. It is recommended that the CC refer the researcher
to the submitter, or add the information as a clear annotation to the original
file. Never make changes in a submitted file unless instructed to do so by
the submitter.
Copyright laws can be complicated.
For more information, try these links:
Copyright Fundamentals for Genealogy
by Michael Patrick Goad
http://www.stellar-one.com/copyright_concepts/fundamentals_gene.htm
United States
Copyright Office
http://www.copyright.gov/
How to Link to Offsite Files
Many researchers have great information on their own pages. If you
link to an off site file, be sure to properly identify the link to avoid the
appearance that the file is on your county pages.
Improper:
XXXX County Marriage Records
Proper: John
Doe's XXXX County Marriage Records - Great Link!
A separate
"Links" page, identified as such, is a good idea.
When You Leave...
We
don't want you to leave! : )
However, if you must, we ask the
following:
Minimum 30 days notice to the SC
Willingness to help locate a
replacement CC
Willingness to help make the transfer
to the new CC quick and smooth
Willingness to help train the new CC
What Stays with
the County:
According to the USGenWeb By-Laws
Article XI, Sec. 4: ..."those sections of the website
submitted or donated by contributors other than the website coordinator, shall
remain with the website." This includes queries, files,
photographs, transcriptions, and documents submitted by researchers, other than
yourself. It also includes material/graphics already in place at the time
you took the county.
What is
Optional to Leave with the County:
MSGenWeb account space on which the
county resides*
County Mailing List*
Your individual contributions to the
county, such as files, photographs, etc.*
*We hope, in the interest of the
researchers, that you will consider passing on any, or all, of the above, if
they exist. We hope that you will continue to allow MSGenWeb to
display whatever material - transcriptions, documents, photographs, etc. -
that you personally have placed online. These items are
optional, however, and it is up to you. We won't twist your arm.
: )
If you choose to remove your own
material from the county, it is hoped that you will leave the material online
somewhere, and provide the new CC with a link to that material.
NOTE: If the
outgoing CC retains the account, all USGenWeb and MSGenweb logos, and all text
references that identify the site as a USGW/MSGW site should be promptly removed
from all pages.
At time of transfer, if you have
reached any type of a "special" agreement with your successor, please forward a
copy of that agreement to the SC.
Submitted Files and Documents
MSGenWeb welcomes
individual submissions of original material, or transcribed Public Domain
material, relevant to Mississippi genealogical and historical research.
Examples: Census, Bibles, Church, Wills, Cemetery, Military Rosters,
Tax Lists, and old or original photographs of general interest to the
county.
Due to space limitations, many
servers are not able to accept GEDCOM submissions, long family outlines,
and in some cases photographs. Check with the individual Coordinator
for space availability, and to see what is available for submitting individual
family information. Each county coordinator has the final determination as
to what will be accepted for placement within a county. Please trust their
good judgment!
To submit material to any MSGenWeb
site, contact the appropriate County Coordinator, or click
HERE.
SEMA Elected
CC and SC Representatives
MSGenWeb is in the
Southeast/Mid-Atlantic Region (SE/MA). The current Advisory Board
Representatives for our region are:
State Coordinator Representative
Jeff Kemp, August 31, 2020
msgwsc@gmail.com
County Coordinator Representatives
http://usgenweb.org/volunteers/scccguidelines.html
To Subscribe to the SE/MA Regional
Mail List to meet and discuss issues with your representative, send a message to
the address below, leaving the subject line blank and typing only the word
"subscribe" (without the quotation marks) into the body of the message. Turn off
your sig lines, if you use them.
Mail Mode
USGenWeb-SE-L-request@rootsweb.com
Digest Mode
USGenWeb-SE-D-request@rootsweb.com
This list is for USGenWeb Members
only.
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