The MTGenWeb Project
The County of Excellence Program has been discontinued for the time being.
The MTGenWeb Review Panel is responsible for selecting an outstanding county to receive the County of Excellence Award each month. The state is divided into 5 regions and one county will be nominated from each region each month. The 5 nominations will be sent to the Final Review Panel for determining the county to receive the award.
List of County of Excellence Winners
The State Coordinator will appoint the Review Panel Chair and the first members of the Review Panel. The Review Panel Chair will appoint subsequent members as needed. There is no limit on the number of members on the Review Panel. 5 members will be assigned regions and remaining members will be on stand-by to fill in as needed. A Final Review Panel of at least 3 members of the Review Panel will each review the nominated county sites and send the top 2 to the Review Panel Chair privately. The Chairperson will tally the votes and announce the County of Excellence on the mail list. In case of a tie, the Chairperson will review the tying sites and break the tie. Counties receiving the County of Excellence Award are ineligible for the award for a period of 6 months.
Requirements
County web sites must be compliant with the following requirements to be eligible for the County of Excellence Award.
- Meet USGenWeb requirements
- The CC's name and email address is on the main page and the e-mail address is current.
- MTGenWeb is formatted correctly.
- The phrase GenWeb (without MT, US, Can, etc.) cannot be used anywhere on a website.
- The correct USGenWeb logo is on the front page.
- The correct MTGenWeb logo is on the front page.
- There is a link to the main MTGenWeb page on the front page.
- There is a link to to the main USGenWeb page on the front page.
- There is a last update date on the site and it is current within 6 months.
- There is a link to a Query Page or Board.
- The site is focused on genealogy.
- Every page provides genealogy research. (No pages devoted to advertisements, no banner ads, no solicitations, etc.)
- The site has a lookup page for volunteers willing to do lookups in the county or at least have information on who to contact to volunteer.
Criteria
Below is the explanation of points used in rating a web site. Sites are not compared against each other but are rated against an 'ideal'. Points are weighed towards encouraging the sites to have original records, transcriptions or abstracts on the site. It is likely that some sites will not have entries in every category. If there is nothing, a 0 is entered for that category. If there's something on the site that does not fall into a category, points are given in the Miscellaneous category.
The Selection Process
The counties have been divided into 5 regions (see the regions below) and a member of the Review Panel is assigned a region to review using the point system in the chart below. The top scoring site is then submitted to the Review Panel Chair by the 15th of the month. After receiving all 5 submissions, the Chairperson sends the list of nominations to the Final Review Panel. Each member of the Final Review Panel reviews the sites using the same points system and submits the top 2 rated sites to the Review Panel Chair privately by the 25th of the month. The Chairperson tallies the "votes" and announces the County of Excellence.
Category
Points Description
County Contacts Contact information for the county courthouse, libraries, museums, etc. Scans & Transcriptions This includes all types of records that are scanned or transcribed. More points are given for records on the site than for links to records. County History There are many types of county history. More points are given for more history Last Update 30 days or Less This is either 0 (over 30 days) or 5 (30 days or less) point category Overall site search Site search engine = 5 points Miscellaneous Content/Archives This will include miscellaneous information that does not fit in any other category and active Archives links Presentation Color, graphics, links working, page design, etc.
The Regions
NW
NE
SW
Central
SE
Page Updated: 15 Oct 2020
