Clare emigrants to Australasia - updating of dataset

[Paddy Casey]

In the course of 2005 members of the Rootsweb Clare List contributed family history data on County Clare emigrants to a Clare-Australasia dataset. The data thus collected is published on the Clare diaspora website at http://clare-diaspora.org and can be downloaded in various formats from Penny Gordon's website at http://au.geocities.com/clare_diaspora/index.html It was originally intended that the database be made editable so that the contributors would be able to change and augment their data. However, the necessary programming help was not forthcoming so the data has been frozen.

Recently the Clare County Library has started hosting donated Clare-relevant data contributions (go to http://www.clarelibrary.ie and click on "What's New" to see examples). They have just told me that they would be prepared to host your data on their site. This would seem most appropriate to me as the data is very relevant to the social history of the County and I am grateful to the Library for the offer.

The data will shortly be sent to the Library for inclusion on their site at their convenience (see deadline below). In the meantime the contributors have an opportunity to make any changes they wish.

To this end I have sent a copy of the spreadsheet to the email addresses of the original contributors. I can also supply copies to others who were not among the original contributors and who wish to add data to the data set. Just send me an email (pcasey@compuserve.com ) requesting a copy of the spreadsheet.

IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTORS AND WISH TO EDIT YOUR DATA:

To facilitate the work at this end please make changes as follows:
- Open the Excel spreadsheet*
- Navigate to the line(s) containing your entries which you want to change
- Make the changes
- Delete the other lines in the spreadsheet so that the only lines left are the ones you changed (you can leave the header line at the top)
- Carefully check your data for content, spelling and punctuation before saving
- Save the file as an Excel 97 spreadsheet (please do not save in a later version of Excel; It doesn't matter which version of Excel you use as long as it is Excel 97 or a later version. However, the file must be saved in Excel 97 format. The Save options in Excel allow you to determine the format the file is saved in) and include your name in the filename so that we can identify it as coming from you
- Return the file to me at pcasey@compuserve.com.

IF YOU WERE NOT AMONG THE ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTORS AND WISH TO ADD DATA TO THE DATASET

- write to me requesting a copy of the spreadsheet template
- open the spreadsheet
- enter your data, putting each emigrant on a new line
- leave the first column empty (this is the record number)
- Carefully check your data for content, spelling and punctuation before saving
- save the file as an Excel 97 spreadsheet (please do not save in a later version of Excel; It doesn't matter which version of Excel you use as long as it is Excel 97 or a later version. However, the file must be saved in Excel 97 format. The Save options in Excel allow you to determine the format the file is saved in) and include your name in the filename so that we can identify it as coming from you
- Return the file to me at pcasey@compuserve.com.

Please return your spreadsheets by 28-June-2007. There may be a later opportunity to add data but this is the deadline for this version of the data set.

Thank you.

Paddy