Lists of lists of the missing
I’m going to be on MSNBC at 8:15a Sunday (yes, that early on a holiday weekend, it’s entirely possible that I have a bigger audience on this blog) to talk about the means for families to find the missing online. There are many good-hearted souls creating ways for people to find each other … too many, perhaps. I won’t even list the actual lists; these are just the metalists:
* About.com has a great list on its hurricane package, which also has much more useful content. (Full disclosure: I consult there).
* Yahoo list
* Online Journalism Review list, maintained by Staci Kramer.
* Homeland Security’s FirstGov list
* Rex Hammock is maintaining a good list and here’s another
* Nola.com’s missing board
* Nola.com’s I’m OK board.
* Here is a data base for the National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue.
* CNN’s list
* WWL’s I’m OK board
* WWL’s missing board
* WDSU’s missing board, by neighborhood.
* Yahoo’s boards
* MSNBC’s
* National Next of Kin Registry
* The Red Cross
* Earthlink
* Katrina Help
* Gulf Coast News
* WeblogsWork
* Hugh
* New Orleans Network
* And here is an already-crowded representation on a Google map.
There are already a few dozen of these. Clearly, that is not efficient. One solution is to try to get everything in one data base. But another is to tag and scrape these notices wherever they occur on the distributed internet.
See also Staci Kramer about tagging all this.
By the way, I have no intention of hosting the definitive list of missing lists. That should go to big sites like Yahoo.
September 3rd, 2005 at 8:37 pm
Okay, you’ve made a list of lists of lists. Although the whole “aggregation” thing is nice, that might be going a little far… =)
September 3rd, 2005 at 8:58 pm
Lots of forums for the missing, impressive. But what’s needed is a database supporting searching for names and addresses. Nobody can scroll all those single messages, it would be great if someone would summarise and organise the informations.
September 3rd, 2005 at 11:30 pm
Josh Britton is having a discussion about a big database on his site.
http://joshbritton.com/
September 3rd, 2005 at 11:40 pm
Thx Patricia, this really sounds good:
‘We have setup a database in cooperation with Microsoft, Corp. The database will be for all relief centers in LA and hopefully soon to be Houston and MS that will help people connect with their loved ones that they cannot find.’
http://paul2.net/?p=87
September 4th, 2005 at 8:46 am
[...] Jeff Jarvis has an extensive list of links to online lists of the missing. A centralized database that could search all of the lists might be useful to victims’ families. (Hello, Google?) [...]
September 5th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
There are 3 big database consolidation projects on going. One is for the New Orleans area only. Here are the URLs for info on the projects
http://www.katrinadataproject.com/
http://192.122.183.218/wiki/index.php/PeopleFinderVolunteer
http://peoplefinder.neworleansnetwork.org/
You can view an extensive list of web sites where those missing family and friends after Katrina can look.
http://littlecoop.100megsfree5.com/katrina/