Boston--"The New England Historic Genealogical Society" announces call for entries to the 2004 NEHGS Technology Award--Deadline October 31, 2003.

In an effort to encourage and foster the development of rigorous genealogical research techniques in computerized or electronic formats, NEHGS is now accepting nominations for the fifth annual NEHGS Technology Excellence Award. This award is granted annually during the GENTECH Conference for Genealogy and Technology. The award will be presented during the eleventh GENTECH conference, which will take place in St. Louis, Missouri, January 22-24.

The award may be granted to an individual or organization and will carry with it:
- A one-year membership to NEHGS
- Notice on the NEHGS website, www.NewEnglandAncestors.org
- Travel expenses for the recipient (or recipient's representative) to the award ceremony
- Recipient's choice of products from the NEHGS online store ($500 value)

The award will be determined by a committee appointed by NEHGS. Nominations are welcome and may be submitted, but the committee will also consider initiatives that fit its criteria but have received no nomination. To be eligible for consideration, a project must demonstrate or enable the highest standards of genealogical research in electronic form, and do so in an innovative and replicable manner.

The award is intended to recognize appropriate use of technology to achieve genealogical results; eligible projects must therefore present a worthwhile genealogical result obtained through technological tools. Displays of technological "wizardry" devoid of genealogical merit will not be considered, nor will pure genealogical content outweigh technological shortcomings. Examples of projects that might fit these criteria are:

- Electronic representation of original source documents
- Electronic publication of genealogical research, including full source documentation
- Cataloging of repository materials for electronic access
- Collaborative efforts among societies, family history associations, or commercial ventures to increase the electronic accessibility of genealogical resources

Employees of NEHGS and their immediate families are not eligible for consideration for this award. Nominations may be sent to: techaward@nehgs.org. The deadline for submissions for the 2004 award is October 31, 2003.

THE 2003 NEHGS TECHNOLOGY EXCELLENCE AWARD The New England Historic Genealogical Society is pleased to announce that the 2003 winner of the NEHGS Technology Excellence Award is the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center's Obituary Index (www.rbhayes.org/index).

The Obituary Index was created originally as an obituary card index, then developed and expanded as a computer data file during the 1980s and 1990s, and converted to a web version in 2001. It currently indexes about 300,000 people from Northwest Ohio. Most of the names have more than one citation, so there are well over 500,000 references indexed. Although this started out as a local resource tool for the city of Fremont and Sandusky County, Ohio, it has expanded geographically since it went online. It is now entering a more regional phase covering nineteen cities with the recent addition of twelve libraries from a Northwest Ohio library consortium (NORWELD). Those libraries will be able to enter their data directly into the index.

The Hayes Presidential Center organized the project and received financial help from local libraries, genealogical societies, a local newspaper, and individual genealogists. The custom-designed program uses MS SQL as the database software and Cold Fusion to mount the data on the Web. Volunteers index the newspapers, input the data, and fill the online obituary orders. For more details on how the obituary index was created, visit http://index.rbhayes.org/explanation.cfm