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Presenter: Ronald Doctor, Kremenets District Research Group

Cooperative town-based record acquisition and translation is less costly and more productive than trying to "go-it alone". The Kremenets District Research Group, inspired by JRI-Poland's successes, has been evolving these techniques for the past 15 years. Now, the Group counts 550 people on its mailing list; 33% of them have donate to promote the research effort. This presentation discusses ways individual researchers can join together to obtain and translate records for their ancestral towns. It covers methods for identifying prospective group members, contacting, and staying in contact with them, identifying resources to help you obtain records and documents, fundraising to pay for your efforts, ways to keep your group motivated, recruiting volunteers and translators, and handling myriad administrative tasks. It also discusses ways to expand your efforts to cover towns within a geographic district. Although focused on Eastern Europe, the methods discussed can be easily adapted to other geographic areas.