Sometimes we assume that everyone knows about their County Mailing List (many of them are through Rootsweb), but I wanted to speak about how helpful the County List can be for letting everyone  know about your pages, your work, as well as be a valuable resource for researchers in the county itself.

I’ve always found that most people don’t really know that we want people to contribute their data.  Sure we say this on our pages, but so often, people are timid and don’t think this means them.  They may think their family really isn’t of interest to others — when in fact, everyone’s family helped to shape the county in one way or another.

I also make a point of joining the GEORGIA@rootsweb.com list.  Sometimes it is very, very slow — other times it is quite active.  The more CCs that would become active on this list, the more people would be aware of the work GAGenWeb actually does.  By attempting to help someone with answers on the Georgia list, you can also refer them to some of our helpful GAGenWeb pages.

I’ve also been asked about "who is the manager" of a County List.  This varies, and I would say the majority are not members of GAGenWeb. In the early days, almost every manager had a county in GAGenWeb.    However, regardless of who is manager of the List itself, I’ve always found that anyone who attempts to help out on the List, will quickly be viewed as someone who will take the time to answer and direct people to places to search. Your  posts generally lead to people showing more interest in your own County pages.

I’d be interested in knowing how others make use of their County Lists.