Ideas pls : best programme for a searchable "pioneers index" database

An important issue is how much data is involved. How many index entries and how much information (in characters) per entry?

You would need to ask the people who own the Digger software to get an idea of the cost, but my suspicion is that it would be an expensive option.

I think you need to proceed very carefully then. You CANNOT copy the original material into your updated edition (even if it is a database instead of a book) without the permission of the original copyright holder. You may be able to re-create the original material from other sources (subject to their copyright), but not copy it from the original script. Of course, if the original copyright holder is agreeable to your use of their original material, then there is no problem about using the material but you need to agree up-front who will hold the copyright over the 2nd edition (you alone or both of you).

You seem uncertain and perhaps even uncomfortable about what the family history group will do with your index. This suggests to me that you want to take a lot of care with the copyright issue. If you (alone or together with the original copyright holder) hold the copyright over this second edition, then the family history society cannot sell the index without your permission, and you can attach whatever conditions you like to that permission. For example, if you feel strongly that it is priced affordably, you could agree the price with the family history society as part of giving your permission.

You mentioned "donating" the index to the family history society. There is a big difference between giving a copy of the index to the society for their use (they cannot re-sell it) and buttigning the copyright to them (the society can then do whatever they like). You probably want to be clear in your mind from the start what you intend to do. Once you have buttigned copyright to the society, you lose all control over the index. They are free to do whatever they like, including do nothing at all (e.g. put it in a drawer and forget about it). Personally I would not be comfortable with that option for that reason.

What kind of searches do you think people will want to do? If you think most people are going to do lookups by surname (the most common search I would think), then maybe the simplest solution is to use tables in Microsoft Word and sort them by surname (which Word can do for you), which can then be output as printed pages or as WWW pages. It is very cheap solution and using the WWW makes the index widely available. Here is an example of a book index we did that way:

Remember that people can use their browser to search for text on a WWW page, so that provides a basic ability to search on other criteria. Also remember that a WWW page can be as wide as you like (the browser will scroll) which may be important if you have 40 fields.

However, if you have mbuttive amounts of data or your users will require far more sophisticated searching (e.g. find all the people born between 1856 and 1888), then you need some kind of database to underpin it. Can you be a bit more specific about your needs?

Kerry