1.  As a Look Up Volunteer.   If you have Gwinnett County research materials, such as histories, census records, cemetery books, etc., you could offer to do "look-ups" for fellow researchers.  If your materials are still copyrighted, you need to get the author's written consent. 

2.  "Adopt" a Town or Topic.    Our goal is to expand the available online history & genealogy of Gwinnett County. 
Here are some ideas for special projects, but you may have an idea of your own:

                                                 Town / Community History
                                                 African American History/Genealogy
                                                 Native American History/Genealogy
                                                 Other Ethnic or Religious Group
                                                 School or Church History or Roster
                                                 Industry or Business
                                                                 Historic Site
                                                 Other Ideas???

3.  History or Family Association Web Page.  If you have your own genealogy web page, especially one with historical information, or a single surname site, please be sure to let me know!   History pages and Family Associations or Single Name sites will also be listed on the Research page as well as in the Surname Registry.  If you find a Gwinnett  County site that should be listed, please let me know!

4.  Take Photographs.  If you live in the area or will be visiting soon, please consider taking photographs for upload to the Gwinnett  County site (you may want to check to see what's already been done).   If you have a digital camera, be sure to take them on the lowest resolution, and even then, you'll need to reduce the size of the image to e-mail it.  Less than 120K per image (one image attached to each e-mail) is a fairly reasonable download, although sometimes Outlook Express disagrees!  If you know how to edit the image size to under 60K, that is the perfect size to upload to the web site.  PLEASE, let me know ahead of time that you will be sending an attachment.  I have very restrictive settings on Outlook Express and Norton Internet Security.

5.  Transcribe Cemetery Records.   Help us get free information on the Internet by transcribing cemetery records.  This can be from actual tombstone transcriptions or from church records.  You'll want to first check current Gwinnett cemeteries online, and check the Tombstone Project to see if anyone has already signed up to transcribe the cemetery you have in mind.  If you're transcribing a church cemetery, please be sure to call the church in advance.   If you visit in person, please take a couple of photographs of the cemetery "landscape"!

6.  Transcribe newspaper articles, portions of books, diaries, letters, or town records.   If you have possession of anything like this, or if you'd be willing to visit the public research library or LDS center, anything of general interest would be most welcome!   Generally, if material was published prior to 1924 it is in the public domain (you still must quote your source).  If it was published after 1924, you must have written consent from the copyright holder (usually the author or the author's estate, but sometimes a historical society or town).  If it is an original document that you own, such as a diary, you generally have the right to publish it, but please be sensitive to family privacy issues.

7.  Post your deeds, wills, obituaries, etc., to the Gwinnett County site. If you have slave information on any of these documents, please send me a note and I'll copy them to a separate page for African American research.  You can send them to me as regular text files, or just copy and paste to an e-mail.

8.  Post your GEDCOM to RootsWeb's World Connect .   If you have your family tree in any  genealogy software program, you should be able to convert it to a GEDCOM and upload it to the internet.    Be careful to record your sources and please don't ever publish information on living persons- it is a serious breach of privacy and security.    I only know Family Tree Maker software, but maybe this will help you convert your family tree into a gedcom file.  Open your family file.  Click on "file" "copy/export".   A window should open, showing your family file(s).  Highlight the file you want to copy to a gedcom.  In FTW, there is a smaller window at the bottom that gives you the option of how you want to save the file.  Use the drop down menu and save as GEDCOM (*.GED).  Your gedcom file will show as a little tree.  Go to WorldConnect and create a user name and password for yourself.  You'll select the options you want to use.  When choosing the source of the gedcom file, browse to your saved gedcom file and click on it.  If you have trouble with your particular genealogy software, a posting to the mailing list should elicit a volunteer to talk you through the process.   http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/

9.  Old Photographs of Places, Towns, or Groups.    Do you have a scanner?   If you have access to any old photographs or postcards depicting town or county scenes, please consider scanning and contributing the images.

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PLEASE READ BEFORE MAKING A CONTRIBUTION   

If you have access to information that is not copyrighted (or you have written permission to reprint copyrighted material), please send your contribution in PLAIN TEXT.   The quickest and easiest for me to copy, paste, and reformat on an .html page is NOTEPAD or its equivalent, with no indentations, headings, bold print, or tables.  

MS Word codes interfere with .HTML coding.  If I receive a document in Word or Excel,  I will strip it of all of its original formatting, and format it as best I can on the web page.  That takes additional time, and may delay the  uploading of your materials. 

The simpler, the better.  This is just one example of a plain text document at the USGenWeb Archives: http://files.usgwarchives.net/il/dupage/cemeteries/littlewd.txt . 

If your original transcription is in Microsoft Word, it would be a big help, and speed things up considerably, if you convert your document to Notepad. You'll find excellent instructions on THIS SITE at SMB Creative Group's Help Desk. 

NAME YOUR FILE

Please name your file something short and specific, with no spaces, commas, or punctuation.  You may use upper or lower case, and may insert a break between words with an underscore, such as John_Jones.txt.

YOU MAY INCLUDE A PHOTOGRAPH

If you are including a photograph, please do not embed it in the document.  Send it as a separate .jpg file.  Please name the file with no spaces or commas.  It may be something like johnjones.jpg or john_jones.jpg (with an underscore - not a dash), or JohnJones.jpg. 

In considering what items would be appropriate, please remember that the primary goal is to enhance the Genealogist's or Historian's experience on this site.  Ask yourself the following questions:

(1) IS THIS GENEALOGY?

(2) WAS THIS BOOK, ARTICLE, OR PHOTOGRAPH published after 1923? Is it copyrighted, and do I have written permission to republish? Read more about Copyright.   Names and Dates cannot be copyrighted, but compilations and written histories and genealogies may be copyrighted.  Please name your source in your transcription of a published document.

(3) DOES THIS MATERIAL CONTAIN THE NAMES OR PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIVING PEOPLE,  and do I have consent from those people to publish their names and/or photographs?  This may also go back to the first question:  Is this Genealogy?

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The USGenWeb Project is a not-for-profit organization of volunteers, dedicated to free access to genealogy on the Internet.  Each state, and almost every county, has its own web site.  In addition, the USGenWeb Project has special projects, such as the Tombstone Project, the Archives Project, and the Census Project.  If you so desire, you may duplicate your contribution to one of those projects.

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• EAGLE SCOUT PROJECT IDEAS
  

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