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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

What happened after my WARNING blog post

On Sunday April 6th I published a blog post called "Warning!  Don't do THIS", even though I rarely post on Sundays.  It was about how I tossed over 20 years worth of NEXUS, New England Ancestors and NEHGS Register journals, thinking that now all the articles were online at the New England Historic Genealogical Society website www.americanancestors.org   About a year later I went to look up a NEXUS article, only to find out that none of these articles are part of the database online.  Soon after I tried to look up an article about my Parker ancestors in the Register, and found that the author had not given permission for this to be part of the database.  Apparently there are several articles not online because of this issue.

I tried to find an "all site" way to search for "NEXUS" on the NEHGS website.  It is possible to search for names using the search box on the home page, but it is not possible to search for words like "NEXUS", towns, or anything other than names. Using Google I saw that some of the NEXUS articles are on the website, but only a select few from Volumes I to X.

After I posted my frustrations to my blog, I received many comments, but the most helpful was a comment from Ryan Woods of NEHGS.  I was happy to see that his comment arrived early in the morning.  Apparently NEHGS reads social media and responds quickly!  This is great!  He explained how I could contact the webmaster for copies of the articles I needed.

I wrote to the webmaster right away and received the needed articles two days later, on April 9th.  They arrived in PDF form, and I was very happy to find the information I needed.  Thanks, NEHGS!  This is a valuable bit of customer service everyone who uses the website should know about, not just whiney bloggers.

However, I am still unhappy about not being able to do an entire site search.  Ryan explained that "Regarding, full site search: the search field on the homepage, the keyword field on the advanced search page and the search field on the top right of all other pages, will produce a site search of all NEHGS web pages."  When I tried the keyword "NEXUS"  in the advanced search, all that came up was a name "NEXUS Newton" from an article in the Virginia Genealogist.  Using Google site search gave better results.

Click here to see my first post "Warning! Don't do THIS":
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/04/warning-dont-do-this.html

This is the article you won't find online:

"The English Origin and Ancestry of the Parker Brothers of Massachusetts and their Probable Aunt, Sarah Parker, Wife of Edward Converse" by Doug Richardson, NEHGS Register, Volume 153, January 1999, pages 81 - 96.

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "What happened after my WARNING blog post", Nutfield Genealogy, posted April 10, 2013, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-happened-after-my-warning-blog-post.html: accessed [access date]). 

2 comments:

  1. I'm glad it all worked out! After some concerns I once had I came to the conclusion that it is wise to keep an original in an independent medium: paper, stone, or metal :-) Although these too can be destroyed, they are usually at hand when the power goes out. But a responsive society willing to provide a PDF, NEHGS is to be commended!

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  2. I'm glad you got your articles! But I've still been warned. I'm not going to throw anything out.

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