oldenburg-l - Nachricht 2008-04 00016

[David Harfst <genealogy(a)harfstfamily.org>]

Judy,

There is a lot on line - but not everything is online.  Especially 
church records before public records were required.  Literally tons of 
records, hundreds of years worth, sitting in church archives all over 
Europe, and only on paper.  Even if some helpful people would take the 
time to scan them all in, it wouldn't do much good until they are 
transcribed into a database.  All that takes time, and time is money.

I'm perfectly willing to help anyone as well, but I also have a family 
and a full time job - I can only do so much for free :-)  Luckily, my 
scope of knowledge is pretty limited.  But I'm actually excited when I 
can help people.

You're talking about people who do this full time to put food on the 
table and a roof over their heads.  And it's a matter of supply and 
demand.  If one or two people are charged to do this research at a 
particular church, and they get requests for more research than they 
could possibly hope to get done, either they have a long waiting list or 
they have to charge more to limit the requests to what they can handle 
in a timely manner.

Jrj2304(a)aol.com wrote:
> There is so much information available within the genealogy community. I  
> hope we can still help one another without paying. I would be willing to share  
> anything I have. Judy