Using GOONS To Research

It has been quite a while since I last visited the web site of The Guild of One Name Studies (GOONS). The site typically offered very little and was almost exclusively a billboard providing information about how to contact its members so you could send them your information. According to several people who e-mailed me years ago, the members typically did not share information so the GOONS site was kind of a one-way, dead-end street.

I just paid a visit to the site and was pleased to see that it has changed a bit and now offers some information via its online records section. Please don't misunderstand me, there really is very little here but none of it is findable via typical search engine queries because of the way the site is designed. My reason for mentioning GOONS is twofold. First of all, I know I often stop visiting certain web sites because they don't offer very much to me at a given point in time. It is a mistake to ignore an otherwise good site from that point on because many sites add information regularly or change their focus to provide more information. It pays to visit your old favorites and see if there is anything new there. Also, I often forget that information is not always reachable by the search engines. For example, much of the USGenWeb Archives is not indexed and therefore, reachable via the search engines. Another site I know is very large and continually adds information, very little of which is ever indexed by Google or others.

So don't do the lazy thing and limit yourself to the search engines. Do yourself a favor and pay GOONS and some of your old favorite sites a visit. You may just find something you're looking for!