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About This Site
My goal in creating this site was to provide a part of the census to the Internet community. I already had several reels of microfilm of the census that I had purchased many years ago. Why not post them on the web? At first I attempted to join the efforts of an excellent organization that is posting various parts of the census on the web and was looking for volunteers. However, I was told that the software I would need to use was not yet available. So I set out to post my small part of the census on my own.
Initially I tried to type the census into a table, but it quickly became obvious that I would users would either need an extremely wide screen or the ability to read microscopic type. The format just wasn't working. That's when I hit on the idea of a comma-delimited format, which saved a great deal of space. While not ideal for viewing, it does provide all the information, once one knows the key.
After paying over $200 for full-size photocopies of the census microfilm I was working on, I spent over six months typing and proofreading. Bleary-eyed and determined never to volunteer for anything again, I began hand-coding the HTML for the site. After posting it, I discovered that people expected some sort of index or search engine. A fruitless quest for a search engine that would search only my site and not cost me anything resulted in my creating an index, again by hand (assisted by some complex searches in CodeWright).
It was only after I had created the entire site that I gained access to NetObjects Fusion and imported everything, which resulted in the much-improved site you see today. |
