Happy New Year to one and all, and hope the holiday season has been the greatest
for everyone.

We have 4,345 volunteers at this time. We have 60 new volunteers, 53 left of their 
own accord, and 61 were removed this month by staff for bouncing e-mails or being 
non-responsive.

NON-US VOLUNTEERS

The pages for the countries other than the United States have been revamped. The 
long waited database for those countries has now been finished and in working order.

I need for the volunteers in these countries to actually go look at your listing 
and see if it appears correctly. By correctly, I meant listed in the correct region 
and/or area (or both). I, like most americans, are geographically challenged when 
it comes to foreign countries and their divisions. I relied on the search engine 
"Google" to give me some of the information, but not all was available.

If you find your listing is NOT listed correctly, please go to the change form 
(http://www.raogk.org/change.html) and fill in your country, e-mail address, be 
sure to check the radio button for either Canada or International so the message 
will to get to me; in the comments box please let me know how to enter your listing. 
For example, if you volunteer for the Alsace area (province/division?) of France -- 
you would put Country: France, Region: Alsace, Area: Haut Rhin.

AN APOLOGY

Apologies go out to our Canadian volunteers who were hit with a spam message 
this month. I wrote to the individual who was responsible for the spam letting 
her know to cease and desist sending mail to the volunteers at RAOGK. Needless 
to say she wrote back, indicating that she had only sent the message to "your 
volunteer" (indicating only one volunteer received the spam). Our server logs 
indicate different. If you received the spam from Maggie Peters using the e-mail 
address mpeters@xcelco.on.ca regarding McIntosh families in Canada since December 
22, 2002, please advise me at raogk@raogk.org.

ATTBI PATRONS

A message was sent out early in December to the volunteers we had at the time 
with addresses thru ATTBI. In case I missed someone, will repeat the announcement 
here.

ATTBI was bought out by Comcast, which I am sure most folks know about. However, 
Comcast isn't announcing until the last minute that users now with an @attbi.com 
address that their e-mail addresses will change to an @comcast.com address 
"sometime" in the future.  Please be sure when you get your notice that your 
e-mail address is going to change to submit that change to us. You will need to 
go to http://www.raogk.org/change.html to do this.

ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM VOLUNTEERS

Ralph Martin, La Paz Co, AZ, volunteer, lost email address for a lookup from a 
Bonnie in November. If you are that Bonnie, please contact Ralph regarding your 
cemetery lookup at nitram@rraz.net

St. Louis, MO RAOGK volunteer, Becki Larson was featured in a newspaper article 
on December 9, 2002, about genealogy and her involvement with RAOGK.  The article 
can be found at the URL listed below (long URL, you may have to highlight and 
paste it into your browser):

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/news/91F34660BCAD387386256C89
006B107F?OpenDocument&highlight=2%2Crandom%2Cacts&headline=++++Woman+searches+
for+ancestors,+finds+hobby%3A+helping+others+look+

Until next month,

RAOGK Staff