Minutes of the Board of Directors for the USGenWeb Census Project 

Meeting held 7 February 2005 via Internet using mIRC beginning at 9:36PM EDT 
and ending at 10:48 PM EDT. 

Present:
    Ellen Horner
    April Phillips
    Connie Burkett
    Sandy Onbey
    Linda Talbot

A quorum being set, the meeting was called to order by Vice President,
Ellen Horner.

Officer, board, or standing committee reports: None

Special orders addressed: None

Minutes of the January, 2005 meeting as sent electronically have been
received by all present and there being no discussion or corrections are
accepted as sent.

Old Business:

LINKED INDEXES
Connie Burkett told us that the researchers love them and she wished we
had more transcribers working on them. We currently have 66 of the linked
indexes online. The indexes are created from the images on line for those
censuses that have not yet been transcribed.

A third waiver has been created for the transcriber so that a full
transcription can still be done at a later date.

The templates for the linked indexes are merely a shortened version of
the current ones we have with the unused columns deleted and the file
renamed to have the YEAR#-L-INX For the 1840-and-prior: PAGE#, LINE#,
LAST-NAME, FIRST-NAME For the 1850-1860-1870: PAGE, LINE, LAST-NAME,
FIST-NAME, AGE, BIRTHPLACE For the 1880 and up (the ones that have
Enumeration Districts): PG#, LN#, ED, HW-PG#, LAST-NAME, FIRST-NAME, AGE,
BIRTHPLACE.

One caution when trying to get transcribers to do the linked-index files,
don't use the ones that are from sources that have pop-ups. Try to make
sure the images are in the USGenWeb Archives or ones that don't have pop-
up ads.

April mentioned that what she has been doing when she gets a transcriber
who wants the images if her states don’t have any is suggest they check
another State and refer them to the SC. She said that she would also
start bringing up the idea of index to them too.

New Business:

NEW BUTTON LOOK:
Connie has created a new button to indicate the link indexes:  When you
get a minute, look at the next URL, notice the difference in the blue
[VIEW] buttons, some of them have blue-shading behind the button.
http://www.us-census.org/states/maryland/t-md.htm 
The blue shading behind the button means the blue [VIEW] button links to 
the linked-index rather than directly to the images.

PROPOSED USGenWeb BYLAWS AMENDMENT PROPOSAL:

Connie told us that Betsy Mills has been busy trying to get enough states
to join her USGenWeb Bylaws Amendment Proposal. Betsy got enough states
to approve and at this year's election and voting they will be voting on
doing away with the Census Project and Tombstone representatives on the
AB. There had been a lot of discussion on several lists. Some were
wanting 2 seats for all Special Projects, and some were wanting one for
Archives, and one for the rest of the Special Projects combined.

The meeting was adjourned by Ellen Horner at 10:48 PM EDT to reconvene on
March 7, 2005 at 9:00 PM EDT.

Items for next Board Meeting: 

1.  Discussion of the new Bylaws amendment Proposal.