Project #1 - The Cemetery Database

This is, by far, the biggest, and longest running project that I have ever been involved in. I had the idea to create a database such as this many years ago, but was never in a position to actually do it until I went to work for the Palestine Public Library. I started my employment there in the summer of 2004, and shortly thereafter shared my idea with our director. She was thrilled and gave me permission to work on it for our Special Collections Room. Many, many hours later, and with the help of our great volunteers, we now have a database that is well under way to being a valuable tool for genealogists with roots in Anderson County. My sincere Thanks go out to each and every one of you for your help and encouragement. The only other thing I can offer in return, is the hope that our work will survive and be of help for years to come.

My original goal was to list every cemetery in our county (Anderson) and cross reference every name that each one has been known as over the years into one master database. Then to add links to maps, written directions, GPS coordinates, enumerations (listings of burials), and photos of all of the headstones in each cemetery.

I did not (and still don't) have a program for webpage building, and indeed originally had no intention of making it accessable on the internet. While I do have the ability to write basic code, I know my limitations. I do not know enough to build what I had in my mind, nor do I have the time or inclination to learn how. So I fell back on an old reliable program to create my masterpiece, MS Word :-). Yes, I know it has it's limitations, but I was already familiar with it and felt confident that it would do what I wanted it to do. And if it was only accessible through a computer in our library, then so be it. Bottom line, it would attract patrons into our library.

But over time, I realized that being able to present it to the world through our library website is what my goal should have been the whole time. Yes, I was wrong. I admit it. In the past, we were limited on what changes we could do to the site, but times have changed. We now have the ability to include the database with little or no expense. So now we're investigating web-building software, looking for a program in which I can not only import the work I've already done, but that has several badly needed features that are not available in Word. If anyone out there has any suggestions, please don't hesitate to tell me. With any luck, before too long, we'll have found a tool that will make my life much easier, and the researchers much happier.

I'll go into more detail about this project in another post later on. I've rambled on way too long in this one. I'm going to move ahead to try to summarize the other projects that we're working on at the library. If you want to know more about this database before I post more, please don't hesitate to email me. Thanks for your time!