Notes from the December 13, 2001 meeting of the Rochester Genealogical Society ,Computer Interest Group.

Vice President of Computer Interest Group, Roy Thurston, opened the meeting with a slide describing the agenda. There were 45 members and 1 visitor.
Status reports were given by Jim Hall for Membership (more renewals this year, new access code for Rochester, 585; e-mail addresses of those requesting publication), and loss of free duplication service for the Computer Interest Group. (The Board of Directors, meeting on December 15, 2001, decided to have the Computer Interest Group meeting notes put on the Rochester Genealogical Society website, mailing only a single sheet with the meeting announcement and high priority communications. This was done for the January 10, 2002 meeting.)

Bob Coomber gave an update on the March trip to Salt Lake City, with a few openings left at 13 Dec.

Larry Schongar, Rochester Genealogical Society-Vice President/Programs gave an update of the Rochester Genealogical Society January through June meetings' topics and some revised meeting dates. These are published in the Winter 2001 edition of Hear Ye, with more detailed information. This edition is expected to be published in late December 2001.

Roy noted that the January Computer Interest Group meeting is expected to include a presentation on Windows XP, by a Microsoft representative.

The February meeting is expected to be a presentation by Patricia Uttero of the Ogden Library on their electronic holdings.

Changing this recording a bit, the following acronyms were presented, and the answers are at the end of these notes: XP, GHz, WINS.

Current problems were deferred to the Main Program.

LASON, the Information Management Company made a fairly detailed presentation of some genealogy-related projects they are involved in or completed recently. The presenters were Michael Astarita, Vice President, and Richard O'Donnell, Senior Account Executive, 3543 Winton Place, Rochester. Ken Veneron of Rochester Genealogical Society made the initial contact with LASON, relative to records management. Michael recounted some of the digitizing projects in their listing, including the Western New York Genealogical Society Journals (Quarterly) for the past 20 years. They work with analog technology (microforms), digital, and hybrid (digitize then convert to microform). This allows full text searches, as in a .PDF file. This project took about one month, going by scanner to .TIF then to .PDF. This is all on one CD. 60-70% of their output is still on microforms. Future access of CDs is still being debated. Indexing is a preferred benefit of digitizing.

Mike noted that most of the current work is commercial, but is changing to greater governmental applications. County Clerks are moving to the digital technology, combined with 16mm microfilm as the primary media to meet NY State Archival needs. (Jim Hall noted to the speaker that he was recording the presentation and was given permission to continue).

LASON is a worldwide company, with much data capture such as medical forms. Unreadable images can sometimes be enhanced, but this is limited. The LASON URL is: www.LASON.com, for more information.

Rich O'Donnell noted that he was involved with the City of Rochester Archives project and also the Mt. Hope Project. The City records are Marriage Records from about 1850 to 1997, handwritten. There were about 30 fields of information in the early years. A need to rebind the books led to a decision to digitize them, with rapid response to removal and return of the books. LASON decided to microfilm the books to parcel out the digitizing to many operators. The plan is to put these records on the Rochester website, in the near future. The database is viewable on a P.C. in the Archives Office on Andrews St. All this data fits on one CD, but has been separated into several CDs related to different numbers of fields in the records. (Call City Hall to get the Freedom of Information form needed to use the archives). Also, Mt. Hope and Riverside Cemetery records are being microfilmed and digitized, then create a database with page references for any name using the first two letters in the name. Mt. Hope records will start in microfilming in January 2002. The New York State website includes a listing of the grant approvals for entities in the State, giving a limited useful indication of record availability.

The presenters were given a well-deserved round of applause.

The program was a Q & A Panel consisting of Paul Blake, Family Tree Maker User; Chuck Bliley, Digitial Photo Album Publisher; Dick Halsey, Generation/PAF User; Jeff Leist, PC Hardware and Operating System Expert (Microworx); Larry Naukam, Genealogy Web Expert; and Dave Mitchell, Digital Photography Export. The theme: What would I have done different knowing what I know now? The panel members introduced themselves, and asked for questions.

1. Q. A laptop has a shutdown problem.

2. A. Microsoft has a shutdown patch on its site, also updates on equipment maker's website.

3. Q. A start-up problem gives a Smart Drive screen that must be closed to continue.

4. A. A line in Configuration Systems about Smart Drive needs to be REMed out at the beginning of the line to preclude the step from start-ups.

5. Q. Problem with McAFEE Virus Scan saying that it needs to be updated, when it has been updated.

6. A. McAFEE has issued a program update that eliminates a DOS SCAN feature. Check the current status of the update by right clicking on the V shield icon on the lower right part of the task bar, to get the date of the DAT files. There is also the possibility of a second version of McAFEE on the hard drive.

7. Q. Adobe Photo Shop Deluxe causes the A drive to start for a minute, finally getting the SAVE AS. Continuing to work, allows saving to a choice of drives.

8. A. Putting a floppy in the A Drive will allow the system to continue immediately. Check preferences in Photo Deluxe to select the drive for receiving the file.

9. Q. Sending e-mail photos, .JPG or .TIF to some recipients causes the process to not work.

10. A. Some recipients require HTML or other format. You may need to check with the recipients. Also, ZIP compression of the files may deceive the receiving machine that is rejecting the .TIF or .JPG file. AOL has a habit of compressing files to .ZIP that are received as too large, to reduce storage needs on the system. Also, proving a link for the receiver to use will preclude the need to download large files like photos. AOL is known to sometimes reject HTML files. Text files are usually safer to append to files.

11. COMMENT: having to add sources to existing database items after the initial data entry, is very time consuming, and therefore, not always done as required for citing sources. Do it right the first time (one of the Commandments of a Family History preparation).

12. Q. Are older versions of Adobe files forward compatible?

13. A. Adobe Reader requires removal of earlier versions. Although the files are .PDF, there are variations among the file structures of different versions.

14. Q. What kind of file uses an underscore in the name?

15. A. This file contains a VIRUS and must not be opened, but deleted, and destroyed.

16. Q. Difficulty transferring files from a floppy to hard drives.

17. A. May have ghost image of floppy controller. Bring up the system in Safe Mode and look at Device Status for an excess floppy controller; also recheck cable connections.

18. Q. Some problems with JAVA left the Writer of these notes in the dust!

19. A. Answers were given, again difficult to understand. It was suggested that the Microsoft Web site be visited for Windows and Explorer Update downloads,

    What I would have done differently, etc.

20. Q. A problem with sending Family Tree Maker records was encountered due to excessive size of the file overflowing a floppy. Merging became difficult.

21. A. The desired records were separated into a new file to export.

The Panel was given a well-deserved round of applause.

XP = EXtreme Programming
Ghz = GigaHertz
WINS = Windows Internet Naming Service.

The Writer wishes to thank Gloria Church for keyboarding these notes (she is getting better, thanks) and RGS Webmaster Dick Halsey for preparing and including these notes in the Website.

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