When we construct a static web page it remeins the way it was constructed forever unless we go back and change it as we happen to be doing with Myrasplace. When we create a live database, however, we make something that can be changed at any time and the information presented immediately.

In addition it becomes possible to have several persons working on it at once which is why it requires password authentication. It also means that it becomes a repository of information that can be added to or corrected at any time and so becomes a resource for others making searches.

We called it 'Myra's Other Place' because it's attached to the main website. If we didn't do that nobody would ever realise it existed and so nobody would use it. We want people to use it and we want people to consider becoming part of the crew, adding and perhaps editing records they have some knowledge of particular data.

There are now quite a lot of excellent sites providing cemetery and shipping information on-line, but often these are unverified, essentially lists of lists. In our case we work with the intention of tracing an immigrant from his stepping on a ship to when and where he might be buried. To do that it becomes necessary to construct family histories and verify spellings as well as sometimes finding interesting stories we can put up.

An example; in the Mt Isa (Queensland, Australia) there is a headstone in the name 'EXUDER' which is totally incorrect. The actual name is 'ESCUDER' and by checking the name and constructing a thread of history we were able to fit that family in.

Similarly on our passenger listings we trace the family through the local births/deaths/marriages and find the accepted spelling of the name which may differ from that on the shipping documents.

It must be remembered that not a lot of people could read and write in the 19th century, and what the chronicler decided was the spelling became set in concrete on the record.

Another problem was that the very same chronicler would write in the original record book flowing script that appears almost indecipherable to our modern eyes. This means the person transcribing the original records is forced to make decisions that may in practice be wrong...

Then often you deal with indices such as the QLD List of Assisted Immigrants 1848-1912 which you would expect to be right... right? Sadly the people who made those lists were as fallible as the rest of us and not only the names are often wrong, but the files themselves poorly structured. So it takes a lot of checking and re-checking and an enormous amount of time.

For those who care, the genealogies we construct are available for downloading on request, in GEDcom form. You do need to know that these files are 'threaded' rather than monolithic - they consist of a great many short sections rather than a master family file.

So we now get back to a plea for other people with specialist knowledge to join with us. Over the next months there will appear in the BOOKS section of the MOP site a series of how-to-do PDF files listed under a MOP INFORMATION heading and Myra's authorship.

Well... I've mentioned the cemetery database. There's a vessels one and a voyages one, plus a passenger one. These are all interconnected so often the best approach is to go to the General Search Menu and enter your target name. The resulting report screen will show where a given name exists within the system.

There's also a repository of old pictures which are made up of old family snapshots from home, often in Black and White. If we use one of YOUR pictures you get to keep the original and your name goes up in lights...

There's also two TRACES sections. One is for use with shipping records; it provides a history for an ship, while the people TRACES one is considerably more complex. It allows events in an idividual's life to be recorded, often derived from newspaper reports or from references in historical publications.

It also allows extension of the system to record events within a period of history. For example, we've been looking at whalers and sealers and their activities in the southern oceans, and all that is reguired is to add something to the field 'PROJECT'.

Then when searching specify the project field in the pull-down menu beside the search bar and specify the project to search for. The result is a timeline for that project.

So there's a lot more inside the animal than you might think.

Please email us with suggestions or new concepts you might wish to create for yourself.