Note that major revisions have been made to this copy of John Woodgate's FAQ to describe the changes caused by the move of ROOTS-L. By apologies to John, and as soon as things have settled down, I'll send him updated info for his copy, too. --Karen Frequently Asked Questions For soc.genealogy.misc Summary This regular posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and their answers about genealogy or Family History. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the soc.genealogy.misc newsgroup or to the associated mailing list GENMSC-L. If you have any comments or additions, or would like to suggest further topics to be included, then please contact John Woodgate, (john@meertech.demon.co.uk) Contributions by: Brian Randell, Ruth Satterthwaite, Stephen Wood, Johan Berteloot Changes For This Version (1.6 - 1996/01/12) Amended the instruction to access the eworld archive. Copyright and Disclaimer Copyright (c) 1996 by John Woodgate. All rights reserved. This document may be freely redistributed in its entirety without modification provided that this copyright notice is not removed. It may not be sold for profit or incorporated in commercial documents without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Permission is expressly granted for this document to be made available for file transfer from installations offering unrestricted anonymous file transfer on the Internet. This document is provided AS IS without any express or implied warranty. The author may be contacted at Meersbrook Technical Services, 35 Argyle Road, Meersbrook, Sheffield, S8 9HG, England. Questions Discussed General Interest 1. What are soc.genealogy.misc and GENMSC-L for? 2. Where do I get on-line information and guidance? 3. Are there any other sources? 4. What about the Mormon data? 5. How do I get the latest version of the FAQ? GENMSC-L 1. How do I subscribe to GENMSC-L? 2. How do I Unsubscribe to GENMSC-L? 3. How do I get copies of past messages? 4. How do I get the messages as a digest? 5. How do I get the messages as separate messages? 6. I keep getting 'unknown address.' What can I do? LISTSERV 1. What is LISTSERV? 2. What is available from the LISTSERV? GENEALOG 1. What is GENEALOG? 2. How Do I Request GENEALOG Files? Roots Surname List 1. What is the Roots Surname List? 2. How do I add to the Roots Surname List? 3. Roots Surname List on the Web General Interest 1. What are soc.genealogy.misc and GENMSC-L for? soc.genealogy.misc is an unmoderated Usenet newgroup which is intended for any genealogy-related posting which is not appropriate for one of the other soc.genealogy.* groups. Possible topics include time-sensitive and/or wide audience announcements and requests; information about personal experiences and contacts; and solicitation of other researcher's opinions. Other topics include: 1. Questions about which soc.genealogy.* group is appropriate for a given question. 2. Announcements (special events; new products and services, etc.) 3. General advisories (scams, finds in used bookstores, etc.) 4. Wide audience requests: (does anybody have this book; advice about researchers in, or travel to a particular location; etc.) 5. Requests for opinions on ways to handle particular family situations. 6. Sharing of personal experiences that do not illustrate methods of general applicability. 7. Discussions about unusual names or nicknames, etc. All who have access to the Usenet soc.genealogy.misc newsgroup, or to the GENMSC-L mailing list are welcome to join and take part. This newsgroup is not moderated. Anything posted to the newsgroup will be seen by all the readers of the newsgroup and the mailing list and vice versa. Remember, what you post will be seen exactly as you post it. We therefore recommend 'lurking' in the newsgroup or mailing list (i.e. reading messages without posting anything) for a few days so as to get an idea of how people typically phrase their postings, and so learn how to best formulate any questions or comments, before you start posting to the newsgroup and mailing list yourself. Advertising or selling of a product or service is not in general regarded as acceptable. They should be placed in soc.genealogy.marketplace 2. Where can I get on-line information and guidance? There are two sources of information on sites which have genealogical information. The first is a document in the ROOTS-L library called FTPCAC. You can obtain a copy of this by sending a mail message to ROOTS-L-request@rootsweb.com, with the subject "archive" (no quotes), and the body of the message containing the following line: get genealog.ftpcac The second is a list being put together by John Fuller. John posts the list from time to time to the soc.genealogy.misc newsgroup. If you cannot find a copy on your local machine, you can FTP a copy from ftp.cac.psu.edu. The file is /pub/genealogy/text/guides/gresinet.txt. There is also a list available on the Web at . For the foreseeable future, it is likely that much of the information you will need will be found only in books, or on microfilm or microfiche in the various libraries, archives and record offices. Do not expect to be able to restrict your research just to data that is available to you on-line. 3. Are there any other sources? If you are using the World Wide Web (aka WWW, W3, Lynx, Mosaic) you can reach a page related to genealogy via the URL It provides a lot of pointers to a lot of the genealogy related material on the internet. 4. What about the Mormon data? The pre-eminent source of genealogical information is in the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons). There are NO on-line access facilities to this immense library, but there are branches of this library in many towns and cities throughout the world. You would be well advised to seek out your nearest branch of this library and pay it an early visit. 5. How do I get the latest version of the FAQ? You can obtain the latest version of the FAQ from various sources: o Anonymous FTP Herald Information Systems The FAQ is stored in the file /pub/genuki/socgmisc.txt on the machine ftp.herald.co.uk. Demon Internet The FAQ is stored in the file /pub/genealogy/genuki/socgmisc.txt on the machine ftp.demon.co.uk. news.answers archive The FAQ is stored in the file /pub/usenet/news.answers/genealogy/misc. on the machine rtfm.mit.edu. o World Wide Web Herald Information Systems At the URL ftp.cac.psu.edu At the URL o Email Herald Information Systems Via the list processor. Send the following message to listproc@herald.co.uk get genuki-archive socgmisc.txt RTFM Mail Server To use the rtfm mail server, send the following command to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu send usenet/news.answers/genealogy/misc GENMSC-L 1. How do I subscribe to GENMSC-L? You may subscribe to the GENMSC-L mailing list by sending an email message to LISTSERV@mail.eworld.com with the following one line as the only text of the message: SUBSCRIBE GENMSC-L first_name last_name Do NOT include any other text such as a sig file. If you do, the LISTSERV software will attempt to read it as a series of commands and probably send you a message or messages saying it cannot understand you. 2. How do I Unsubscribe to GENMSC-L? You may leave the GENMSC-L mailing list at any time by sending the following message to LISTSERV@mail.eworld.com: SIGNOFF GENMSC-L No name is needed. In fact it will not work if you put your name. 3. How do I get copies of past messages? If you think you have missed an important GENMSC-L message, you can get a copy of all the messages for a particular week. You can do this by sending an email message to LISTSERV@mail.eworld.com with the following line as the text of the message: GET GENMSC-L LOGyymmw Where yy is the last two digits of the year. mm is the month w is the week letter. For example LOG9506A will provide a copy of all the messages handled by the GENMSC-L list for the first week of June 1995. 4. How do I get the messages as a digest? If you would prefer to get the messages from GENMSC-L as a single digest, or 'super-message' containing all the messages for that 24-hour period, send an email message to LISTSERV@mail.eworld.com with the following line as the text of the message: SET GENMSC-L DIGEST Some email readers have the ability to read a digest and to break it down into separate messages for you to read. 5. How do I get the messages as separate messages? If you would prefer to get the messages from GENMSC-L as separate messages, send an email message to LISTSERV@mail.eworld.com with the following line as the text of the message: SET GENMSC-L MAIL 6. I keep getting 'unknown address.' What can I do? From time to time, you may find that when you try to send a reply to a GENMSC-L message, the message gets returned by your name server with the reason 'unknown address'. There is a good chance that the mail.eworld.com machine will know the address. To send your message via this machine (NOT VIA GENMSC-L@mail.eworld.com), you will have to modify the address you are using. For example, if the 'bad' address was: user_name@unknown.address.net To send this message via mail.eworld.com, change the '@' to a '%' and add the @mail.eworld.com to the end: user_name%unknown.address.net@mail.eworld.com This means that you want to use the nameserver of mail.eworld.com instead of your local nameserver. LISTSERV 1. What is LISTSERV? LISTSERV is a computer program which Apple Computer Inc uses to control the various mailing lists it hosts. It is also used by a number of other sites for their mailing lists. It also handles the archives and searching the previous messages. Please try to learn the difference. Send a message to GENMSC-L if you want to communicate with humans. Send it to LISTSERV if you want to talk to a computer. Getting this the wrong way round makes you liable to feel 'a bit silly.' 2. What is available from the LISTSERV? Probably the most important thing you can do would be to request an index from LISTSERV. This will list every file available on the machine. So before you start to ask questions, send the following message to LISTSERV@mail.eworld.com: INDEX and see if your questions are answered there. After receiving the index, you may request the file you want by using the "GET" command in the same manner. GENEALOG 1. What is GENEALOG? GENEALOG is an area on RootsWeb which is used to store the many text files which pertain to genealogy. The GENEALOG area has more than 175 files, all of which are available to any user via normal email. The list is being added to on a regular basis. Watch out for messages in ROOTS-L telling you about a new file. You can request a listing of the files by simply sending a message to ROOTS-L-request@rootsweb.com with the subject line "archive" (leave off the quotation marks) and the message: get roots-l.catalog There is an index of the files maintained at http://www.rootsweb.com/roots-l/filelist.html Four files in particular are worth requesting. These are the welcome files which are sent to new subscribers to the ROOTS-L mailing list. To get a copy of these files send the following message to ROOTS-L-request@rootsweb.com with the subject line "archive": get roots-l.welcome get roots-l.welcome1 get roots-l.welcome2 get roots-l.welcome3 2. How Do I Request GENEALOG Files? To request a file from GENEALOG, just send the following message to ROOTS-L-request@rootsweb.com with the subject line "archive": get genealog.filename Please replace "filename" with the name of the file you want. If required there is a helpfile to explain the use of GENEALOG in more detail which you can obtain by sending the following message to ROOTS-L-request@rootsweb.com with the subject line "archive": get roots-l.helpfile One file of particular interest to new readers is the file SRCHFILE which describes how to search the ROOTS-L Database for a given surname. To request a copy of the file, just send the following message to ROOTS-L-request@rootsweb.com with the subject line "archive": get genealog.srchfile Roots Surname List 1. What is the Roots Surname List? The Roots Surname List is intended to help genealogical researchers compare and share data. Readers are welcome to submit the surnames they are researching for inclusion in the list, if they are willing to share their data with others who may be doing parallel research. Updates to the list are posted the first weekend of each month. Contact information for the submitters of the new or revised info will also be posted. To obtain more information, send any message to rsl-info@emcee.com. 2. Roots Surname List on the Web If you have access to the 'web', then you can conduct an on-line search of the RSL using the URL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- soc.genealogy.misc / V1.6 - 1996/01/12 / john@meertech.demon.co.uk