About the Mail List. A Follow-up Letter from the List Mom Note: The "List Mom" is the List Administrator for the Rootsweb Ireland Mail List. She is the one who is ultimately responsible for this site and the Mail List. Dear List, We do have many new subscribers, so I will explain. The Ireland List serves 800 + ancestor searchers, genealogists and historians with very diverse interests. It is a very unique list. While there is plenty of genealogy, and plenty of folks to help with genealogy questions if you care to ask one. If you have a complaint, you can complain OFF LIST to me through private email. If your complaint is about a thread (or a person harassing you) you can block the offending thread (or person) very easily by using the block function in your email program. I will be very happy to help you with blocking the thread or person if it is something you are unaccustomed to. As far as threads go, the Ireland List has a long tradition of this type of thread about once a year. How the list is conducted is long standing and not up for debate. As I said before, the Ireland List is unique, but not everyone's cup of tea. To unsubscribe from the Ireland List please send an email to: Ireland-L-request@rootsweb.com for mail mode or: Ireland-D-request@rootsweb.com for digest mode. Providing these instructions is not an invitation to leave, indeed, I hope you decide to stay, but this is a way to leave if you find the list is not what you were expecting. Thanks for your cooperation in honoring the many diverse interests on the Ireland List. Regards, Deb List Administrator Romilly@home.com

Welcome to the "Rootsweb" Ireland Mail List! Welcome, one and all! This WEB Site was created to support the Ireland Mail List, which is sponsored by "Rootsweb". The Purpose is to Enhance the Mail List by providing a place to collect together items which are of interest to the Mail List Members. Such things as Irish Stories, Irish Poems, Historical Notes and Stories concerning Ireland and the Irish, Irish Myths and Legends, Irish Recipes, Irish Music, and Information about Ireland and the Irish all have a place on this site. Of Course we should realize that not everything we would like to see on this site can be posted for one reason or another, but then again.... that is one reason for the Links Pages. :) This site is fashioned after the Mail List and is not set up for the purpose of Nationality Bashing, Religon Bashing, or just plain People Bashing. :) However, the List Mom/WEB Master also realizes that the stating of comments and facts, which can be shown as having merit, is not truly Bashing. It is simply speaking the truth, or at least an honest viewpoint. :) With that out of the way. The Second thing needing addressed is "What is a List Administrator, or List Mom, and how did she get this job?" The List Administrator and Site Mistress is Debbie Romilly, and you have seen her postings above. The title of "List Mom" is sometimes used in place of the more proper and more rigid sounding title of "The List Admin" or "the List Administrator". This alone helps set the tone of the list as generally being a friendly list. The reason why the Ireland List needs an administrator boils down to the fact that the original List Owner and Creator of the Ireland List, John Caughey decided it needed a List Administrator. He must have felt that "his list" needed someone in charge who could handle the probelems and had the power to step and "Sort Things Out" in when necessary. It seems that John was a pretty wise Moderator by normally stepping in when the List Members could not resolve their own conflicts. Of course nothing or no one is perfect, and you can't please everyone all the time -- but John was pretty successful with his form of Moderating. :) When it came time for John to retire, he could have simply just left the List with out an admin, which meant anyone with the desire could have adopted it for their own and ran the list as they saw fit. Another choice he had was to close the list down, and anyone wanting to take over the list would have to restart it from scratch. He chose to do neither of these things. Instead, John decided to choose a third option, he made it known he was going to pass the List on to a person who would do the most good for 'His Baby'. :) He wanted to leave the List in good hands, and after a tough decision, he chose our current List Mom. Now comes the question of "What does the List Admin do?". The first answer is important to understand. Each List Admin runs his or her list in their own way, and that means they can be as easy or strict as they like. They, in effect, own the list. Rootsweb has outlined some of the responsibilities of the List Admin: "A List Administrator is the person responsible for the daily operations of the list and is expected to handle bounced messages and help subscribers with list problems." "The List Administrator decides the character of the list, including what topics are allowed or not allowed. List administrators are free to set guidelines for topic of conversation, query format, surname roll calls, etc." "Rootsweb" rarely gets involved in the day to day operations of it's Mail Lists. They leave the running of the Mail List up to the individual List Admins.. if the Mail List has one. "RootsWeb doesn't set any specific rules for the lists that it hosts other than general ones about copyright infringement, use of profanity, illegal activities, or any other activities which may adversely affect the operations of RootsWeb itself." Another Note is that the List Mom can get "swamped" with emails concerning the List and the Site. So if you write her and she does not seem to respond fast enough.. odds are she is backlogged with messages or finding out the answers to any questions you asked. :) (List Administrators don't "Automatically" know the answers to everything, I am sad to say. LoL) "What is a Newby?" Well to put it plain and simple, a "Newby" is a person who is new to the list and nothing more. If you have been around the net for awhile and ventured into the various forums and chatrooms, you might have seen where use the word "Newby" was used as if it were a derogatory comment, a put down, or something to be ashamed of. Those connotations do not apply here. There is nothing wrong with being New at something, in fact, the "Bewby" sometimes gets considerations which more "Veteran" List Members don't get... so being a "Newby" isn't all that bad, really. :) This page is for the purpose of acquainting the Newby with the Ireland List WEB Site, which contains many things of interest to all Members of the Ireland List. Now that the Preliminaries are covered... let's go on with the show! :)

The Ireland List WEB Site Help Guide About this site! In the beginning, when the initial ideas for the site were conceived, it was thought as being a site relatively small in size. The key sections outlined in the initial phases of planning were a small section about the site and Mail List, a Roll Call Page, Stories and Poems about Ireland, Irish History, Irish information, and a few other things like Irish Traditions, Holidays, and Links to sites relating to Ireland, the Irish and Genealogy. As time went on, the site grew. It was noticed the Members of the Ireland Mail List posted many things to the Mail List which the List Mom felt should go on the site. The site grew at alarming rates. It went from less than 20 pages in the first week of it's existance to 40 pages in the first month to about 80 pages by the time the second month expired. Today the site is not even 3 months old and there are about 95 pages on the site and it takes up an estimated 30 Megs, more or less. The Purpose of this Site The main purpose of this Site is to assist the "Members" of The Rootsweb Ireland Mail List with their genealogical research by providing a place with helpful links, stories, poems and information concerning a variety of topics relating to Irish History, Culture and Genealogy. When you are bookmarking this site, it is recommended to also bookmark the pages you feel you will use the most (The Roll Call or one of the Links Pages are good examples). Most browsers allow you to make folders in your Bookmarks or Favorites. You can create a folder called "Irelandsite" (or something) and save all the pages on this site which you wish to save in there. Let it be understood that more than just the Members of the Rootsweb Mail List are Welcome here, but at the same time it is felt that if you're interested in Irish Genealogy then our desire is to have you as a member. It is also advisable to become a member of the list, if you wish to be added to the Roll Call Pages. As a general rule, this site will "not" be for the purpose of posting the individual Family Histories for each of the Members of the Rootsweb Ireland Mail List. Why not post Family Histories? Several Factors are involved in the answer for this question. Time The Time it takes for the initial work to get each family on-line plus the time it takes for revising each family history periodically must be considered. Space The Space allowed to each Member for their History, plus the total space available to be used for this purpose must be considered. and Format. Whether to use HTML or Text. The Format used will affect the time and space required. An Example First, two guidelines: One Family History is considered to be a write up of about 5000 words (or about 5 Kb) in length. Spending 2 to 3 hours on a WEB Page is not out of line, in fact it is on the low end of the scale. Let's say (for the sake of argument) that one Family History takes an hour and a half to get the information on line and another hour for revisions per year. This equals an average of 2.5 hours per Family History. Now, there are 800+ Ireland List Members and on the average they all have two Family Histories. In actuality, some List Members may have 1 Family History, while others have 3, 5 or even a dozen they could submit for the site. So figuring 800 people at two each is not out of line either. :) This means that it would take (800 times 1.5) 1200 hours to place all 800 Family Histories online initially. Then it would take another 800 hours during the course of the year to up-date and maintain them. This gives us a grand total of 2000 hours that someone will have to spend during the first year to put 800 Family Histories online and maintain them. To convert 2000 hours into terms easily understood, it is equal to about 83 days of working 24 hours a day straight, or about 365 days straight for only spending an approximate 5 and a half hours a day. (FYI, there are only 8760 available hours in a normal year). By comparison, Today's average time spent per day is 7 hours and 44 minutes a day sleeping for people over 15, about 7 hours average (4 to 10 hours a day) working, and about 2 hours a day (average) doing housework (which includes cooking dinner, cleaning, doing laundry, puttering around the house, etc.). As you can see, maintaining a set of Family Histories online could create quite a bit of work. So we leave stuff like that for people to place on their own sites. Instead of posting Family Histories and Genealogy Charts for the Members, this site will offer a Roll Call Page. One Exception to the Family History Rule is the Section for the List Mom/WEB Mistress. Since so much of her time is devoted to the Site and the List, then it should be considered as "Acceptable" that she places her own family data on her site. This will give the other Member's of the List a place to go for reading about her Genealogical Interests. How can I get around the site? Good Question, and a great way to get out of the drudgery of the above issue. :) A Menu to the site is provided on the Main Page of this site. The way that Menu is done takes up too much time to be effective for all the pages to this site, or even all the Main Pages to the Sections of this site. A Menu for each main page of a section is in the works. On the Irish Flags and Colors Page, an experimental menu using an image map is used. If this type of menu is easily understood and utilized by the List Members, then an image map for the entire Ireland Site may be implemented and placed on the main page of each section of this site. Please feel free to explore the site on your own. :) You may find things of interest on the Site which aren't mentioned here. Some of the areas of this site, which a newby may find of value, are: The Ireland List FAQ Page This is a great place to start for the Newby, and the Not-So-Newby :D. This page answers many common questions concerning the Mail List which everyone should know. :) The Ireland List Member's Responses This page are messages taken from the Mail List and written by our Ireland List Members to provide help to other Members. It is worth checking out. :) Ireland Mail List Posting Hints These are a few hints on posting to the Mail List. The Announcements Page The Announcement Page is for Announcements concerning the Mail List and WEB Site. This is the List Mom's Page, where she provides information for the List Member. Dedications and Disclaimers This page is pretty much as it says, it is for Disclaimers and Dedications concerning this site. It also is for copyright notices and other important items. The List Mom may or may not sanction everything on this page. The Roll Call Pages This is the first page to the Roll Call Section of the Site. It lists Surnames and Individual Names of the List Members. There are many pages to this site and due to Member submittals, more pages are in the works. The Roll Call Pages Information Page This page explains the procedures for Roll Call and some helpful information. The Census Page This page has information about the Irish Census and the US Census. Perhaps more Censuses will be added later. General Genealogy and the Internet This page is for the purpose of sharing information and helpful hints about Genealogy Research on the Internet. It also contains other things, such as poems. to make it less boring. :D It's definately worth looking over occassionally. :) Irish Research On this page you will find some help for researching Irish Genealogy. Griffith's Valuation Don't know what Griffith's Valuation is? Then try this page to find out. Lyrics to some Irish Songs The Lyrics are provided mostly for entertainment, so that a person can listen to and sing along with the songs. However it has a secondary purpose. Through the Lyrics to songs of a certain period, we can often see the views of the people and the events of an era. The Links Page This page has numerous sites concerning a variety of topics related to Genealogy and Ireland. There is no telling when this page will get up-dated... usually it depends upon whether there are more pressing things going on at the time. The Majority of the links you find here are links posted on the mail list. There are other Links pages as well on this site, but this is the Main one. Member Links This page is devoted to the posting of Sites which are run, or are related to the names, of the Ireland List Members. The Ship Lisis page This is the third Links Page. It entails nothing but sites concerning Ship lists. The List Mom's Special Links Yep, you guessed it, another Links Page. This one is the List Mom's suggestions. Irish Phrases This is a page of some Irish Phrases and their meanings. Irish Surnames This is an informational type page about common Irish Surnames. It isn't intended to provide great detail on every Irish Surname there ever was, nor does it provide a lot of links to each surname. The Irish Timeline This is something you can see on many other sites over the net, however it is pretty cool to have. :) Irish Traditions Some information concerning the Traditions for some Irish Holidays.

Do you need help with Genealogy? Genealogy, at times, seems to have a language of it's own. A major reason for this is because in Genealogy, terms from practically every field of endeavour through out many ages are commonly found and used. For Generic Genealogy Terms used, please click on this Link: General Genealogy Definitions Maps, Deeds and other Legal Documents are also commonly used by Genealogists. At some point knowing the towns or cities one's ancestors lived in is not enough for practically every genealogist and family historian. the desire to know more about precisely where their ancestors lived seems attractive to them. Maps and Deeds often provide us with a visual aid for "Seeing" our ancestor's homes. If the Maps and Deed you run across throw you for a loop, then this page might help you: Understanding Maps and Deeds Genealogists use all kinds of forms and methods of record keeping. If you wish to know what kinds of forms are used, then this page might help you: Genealogy Forms and types of records.

Do you need help with Internet Messaging and Chatroom Lingo? If you get lost with the symbols and abbreviations you see in some messages, check out this page of emoticons, abbreviations and acronyms. Some Useful Information for Email Discussions