1. Genealogy And The Internet By Stacey Blanton IET 110.002 October 13, 2003

2. History of the Internet In 1957, Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a division of the Department of Defense was formed. Approximately five years later, the RAND Corporation was commissioned by the US Air Force to develop a method for the military to be able to maintain command of nuclear arms in case of an attack. By 1968, ARPANET was developed by networking four university computers together. In 1973, the first email group was formed. Other agencies took over development of the Internet, and by 1996, backbone networks were in place to carry millions of addresses.

3. Genealogy and the Internet Genealogy is the study of family history. In the past, researchers had to venture to old abandoned Cemeteries… or musty old courthouses…

4. However, with the advent of the Internet, genealogy is experiencing an explosion of researchers. In 1996, Jeff Murphy headed a group of genealogists to develop the Kentucky Genweb Project. According to the History of Genweb, their idea was to create a web site on the Internet for every county in Kentucky. After accomplishing this, they expanded to every county in every state in the United States and many sites for other countries. The sites are maintained at the local level and monitored by regional and national coordinators.

5. After this, many other sites have been developed and are essential for genealogical research on the Internet. They include: http://www.ancestry.com http://www.genealogy.com http://www.rootsweb.com/ These sites bring researchers together to share information that otherwise would probably never meet.

6. It appears that genealogy and the Internet seem to be the perfect partners, but there are negative aspects. According to George Lake, in a speech given to the Alberta Family Histories Society, he states, “I believe there are three areas in which we have ethical challenges. They are in the ownership, accuracy and sources of our data; in how we deal with issues of privacy; and about how we behave personally - our manners.” (Lake, 3 Jan 2000) Plagiarism Misinformation Lack of Documentation Because there are so many new researchers entering genealogy, they aren’t stopping to learn proper etiquette. Penny Bonair of IIGS questions some researchers methods, “Genealogists should be asking themselves whether they can trust the accuracy of information found on websites authored by people who copy the work of others and fail to give proper credit or secure permission. (Bonair, April 1999)

7. Being a genealogical researcher since 1990, I have seen firsthand the development of genealogy on the Internet. By using the vast resources of the Internet, I have met many people and discovered missing pieces of my large puzzle that I otherwise would not have found.

8. Despite the drawbacks of misinformation, and poor ethics, the vast majority of researchers are ethical and honest, and only want to pass on information about their ancestry.