Minutes of the Board of Directors for the USGenWeb Census Project

Meeting held November 12th, 2001 via Internet using mIRC beginning at
8:10 PM EDT and ending at 10:32PM EDT.

Present:
    Wayne Duncan, President
    Ellen Horner, Vice-President
    Sandy Onbey, Secretary/Treasurer
    April Phillips
    Connie Burkett
    Sue Soden

A quorum being set, the meeting was called to order by President, Wayne Duncan. Wayne
asked for a moment of "silence" to honor those individuals
who are far away from their homes on this Veteran's Day protecting us and
for those who perished today in the American Airlines crash.

Officer, board, or standing committee reports: None presented

Special orders addressed: None presented

Minutes of the October 29th, 2001 meeting as sent electronically have been received by all
present. Sandy noted that she had made an error in the numbering of the motions in the
minutes of October 16th. Corrections have been made and she would send a corrected copy
to Sue for posting. Amended minutes as presented were accepted.

Old Business:

Motion #2002-13 will be intentionally skipped.

  SERVICEMARK:

    After lengthy discussion on the procedures we need to take regarding our service mark
    application, Motion #2002-14 was made by Sue Soden to request an Official Reciprocal
    Consent Statement from the USGenWeb Project. Connie Burkett seconded the motion. The
    vote on this motion to be withheld until a reply is received from Holly Timm, National
    Coordinator of the USGenWebProject.

    Additional discussion of steps to be taken followed the motion. Wayne Duncan will
    initiate the request for the reciprocal agreement on our behalf.

  NON-STANDARD TRANSCRIPTIONS:

    A discussion was held on the many submitted files that we get that are not done on our
    templates or in CART. While the transcriptions look good it would take our file
    managers too long to convert them to our format and an alternate way of using these
    files is needed. Sometimes these submissions are in HTML format.

    It was agreed to accept the non-standard files and place them somewhere on us-
    census.org using a different color button to designate them as non-standard. A
    separate subdirectory structure can be set up and use "x(state abbreviation)" to
    designate them as non-standard. By doing this our search engine would also pick up
    the data in the files as well.

    It was agreed to add "Non-Standard" to the top of each of these files and Ellen will
    work on a disclaimer for us to add to them also. Connie will also review these files
    first to see if they can be uploaded.

  LINKING TO OUTSIDE FILES:

    A discussion was held on this subject and it was felt that at times it defeats our
    purpose as volunteers sometimes sign up with us and then upload their files to the
    county sites and never submit to us. Up until now though we have not been accepting
    "non-standard" files. At this time we don't have a solution to the problem,  however
    it is one that we need to think about. The two issues are related in a way. If we
    don't link to the files outside of the project, more people will be willing to donate
    their non-standard files to us.

    It was decided that a disclaimer to alert people, not guaranteeing the files we link
    to outside of our project would be fruitless. It was also discussed that we keep the
    links we have now and not remove them immediately, but to not accept additional ones,
    and to also try to acquire the data (with permission) to add to our files. We will be
    keeping the links to the images online as they do help our transcribers.

New Business:

  MOTIONS:

    It was decided that we do not need a motion to "officially" accept Lil's resignation
    and Connie's seat on the Board was confirmed by the election. Board approval of the
    appointment as SC for Larry and Shawn was unanimous and just needs to be mentioned.

    It was agreed to create the new position of HTML File Manager and it will be filled by
    Ann as soon as she is settled after the Holidays and her trip to Florida.

  CONSOLIDATION OF EMAIL LISTS:

    We have had a good acceptance percentage from everyone and several are our old
    transcribers who support us completely. We are really encouraged to have them back
    with us.

The meeting was adjourned by Wayne Duncan at 10:35 PM EDT  to reconvene on November 26,
2001 at 8:00 PM EDT