rooter@well.UUCP (Brian Mavrogeorge) (12/25/85)
Well Victor, what can I say. Some people find it useful, you didn't. You approached the search in the most inefficient manner which suprises me since you say you do genealogical research for a fee. There are bulletins on the system to help make the call productive and at a low cost. You should have read them. Brute force searches are discouraged and the bulletins and other messages to users indicate that the saerch routine is slow and the files are large. If one chooses to do brute force searching they can but they should not later complain of high telephone charges. As any genealogist should know, you narrow your search to appropriate geographical areas, and ROOTS users hone right in on the specific area they are looking for by searching only specific files. (The bulletins tell you that.) Users also pay attention to what they are searching. Since the vital records section doesnt have soundex indexes, I'm not surprised you didn't find a match using a soundex value. So from my viewpoint (admittedly biased) you logged on, did not read the instructions, did exactly what the instructions caution you not to do, and now reach the conclusion that the experience was not productive and was costly. And at that you looked at only a small piece of what was offered. You did not look at the extensive collection of public domain genealogy software. You did not look at the many "how to" articles to help people researching in Europe, Italy, or with other special problems. ROOTS used to have a list of genealogy libraries and societies - it was removed after only one person read it in two months. Thanks anyway for calling. I hope more do. It unfortunate that you didn't follow the instructions - just like good genealogical research, one should never make assumptions about what they know.