Issue 12.16
Cyndi’s List (http://www.CyndisList.com) was launched 20 years ago on March 4, 1996. What started out as a side-page in a personal genealogy web site has become one of the top genealogy resources online. The original site started on one web page with 1,025 links. By the end of that first year the site was sorted onto individual pages with more than 9,600 links in more than 50 categories. Just after its one-year anniversary the site had grown to 17,300 links in more than 60 categories on 195+ separate web pages. The site has continued to grow exponentially with the popularity of genealogy and the Internet. Today there are more than 330,000 links in 207 categories that point to an endless supply of related genealogy links online.
The purpose of Cyndi’s List remains the same today, 20 years after its creation: to be a free jumping-off point and a catalog for the immense genealogical collection that is the Internet. And it is all done not by software, but by a live human being. Every link found on Cyndi’s List is personally visited, titled, given a description, categorized, and cross-referenced across the site. Cyndi Ingle is the creator and owner of Cyndi’s List. The site is a one-woman enterprise in which Cyndi often works 10-12 hours each day, many times 7 days a week. Users of Cyndi’s List are encouraged to submit new links and report broken links, all in an effort to keep Cyndi’s List as current as possible.
Cyndi’s List has always been free for everyone online to use for their genealogical research. It remains free today. The site is supported by advertising and through the donation button found on each page on the site. Generous users of Cyndi’s List have helped to pay for 86 percent of the major site upgrade done in 2011.
Cyndi’s List is unique as a research tool because it has a genealogist, with more than 36 years of experience, behind the scenes maintaining the links. Cyndi urges users to ignore the search engine on the site and explore the categories themselves (http://www.CyndisList.com/categories/). The categorization is what makes the site unique and such a successful research tool. Cyndi works diligently to deep-link into sites that contain genealogical treasures and by doing so brings those links to the top of the heap, easier to for everyone to find. By browsing through the site users find web sites and resources they never thought to look for and break down those brick walls in their research.