Minutes of the Board of Directors for the USGenWeb Census Project Meeting held 02 May 2005 via Internet using mIRC beginning at 9:06 PM EDT and ending at 10:22 PM EDT. Present: Connie Burkett Ellen Horner Sandy Onbey April Phillips A quorum being set, the meeting was called to order by Sandy Onbey who then turned the gavel over to Vice-President Ellen Horner. Officer, board, or standing committee reports: None Special orders addressed: None Minutes of the April, 2005 meeting as sent electronically have been received by all present and there being no discussion or corrections are accepted as sent. Old Business: ELECTIONS… Sandy Onbey advised the Board that all was ready for the upcoming elections. A letter would be sent to the Cens_Assist list to alert all of the eligible voters that the polls would open on May 15th and close on May 25th, 2005. At the appropriate time, a letter would be sent privately to each eligible voter giving them their Voter ID and the URL of the site and password to enter the voting booth and cast their votes. April Phillips and Sandy Onbey will be working together to keep a tally of the ballots cast and report to Connie Burkett the results after the polls have closed and the tally is complete. MORTALITY SCHEDULES… Connie Burkett stated that a notice had not yet been sent to the Census list letting them know that we have the templates for the Mortality Schedules. April Phillips has been mentioning them to some of the transcribers she has had contact with so far. Sandy Onbey suggested posting a notice on the “What’s New” page on our website. April suggested formatting a page similar to one Connie had done for different counties in Pennsylvania as a plan for assignment/status pages for the Mortality Schedules. http://www.us-census.org/states/pennsylvania/ New Business: PROOFREADING… April Phillips brought up the need for locating more reliable proofreaders that would finish their assignment. April stated that she has been removing those who do not carry through from the proofreader’s list so the habit is not repeated. Connie stated that there are still too many files without waivers for proofreading and corrections. It was suggested and approved some time ago that we create an additional file for census record corrections and has been in use for some time now. Without a waiver to approve corrections being made, this is about all we can do for the time being. Connie gave us this URL as an example. http://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/pa/clarion/1870/descendant- notes/kerr-joseph.txt Sandy suggested that the transcribers be advised to make a copy of their files before sending them off to a proofread reader, just as a fail safe against loss of the file. Connie developed the following note for the proofreaders: What materials will I need? You will need the microfilm or scanned images of the microfilm from which to proofread, and the spreadsheet software (or compatible software) the census was transcribed with. In a few cases, the transcriber will have a paper copy, microfilm, or CD of the census images which can be forwarded to you along with a print-out of the data that was entered, in which case you will need to return all the forwarded items when you finish proofreading. No further items were brought up for discussion. Ellen Horner adjourned the meeting at 10:26 PM EDT to reconvene on June 6th, 2005 at 9:00 PM EDT. Items for next Board Meeting: 1. Letter to be sent out announcing the Annual Meeting on June 27th, 2005 2. Progress of the election.