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Membership Database

The OFS membership database is maintained by the Genealogist. Originally, it was the Secretary's responsibility, but that was changed when it became clear that that approach introduced problems:

  • The database might contain multiple people with the same name, such as William Olin. The Secretary had no way of knowing which William was which or whom to contact in case a newsletter was returned due to a changed address.
  • The Genealogist maintained address information for far more relatives than just those paid members of the OFS. As a result, he and the Secretary would have duplicate addresses for OFS members. When one of those addresses changed, it would have to be changed in two places or confusion would ensue.

To eliminate those problems, our current Genealogist (Tom) has integrated the OFS membership database into his genealogy database (hereinafter referred to as "the database"), for which he uses the software program Reunion® from Leister Productions. Now, every OFS membership is pegged to its rightful place in the family tree, and he maintains addresses in one and only one place.

Adding the membership list to Reunion required defining the following new records in the database:

OFS Number
Record type: FACT. This is the member's OFS ID number.
OFS Type
Record type: FACT. This is the type of membership, either Regular or Associate. See the by-laws for details.
OFS Expiration
Record type: EVENT. This is the date the membership expires. For the OFS, this is just a year; our memberships expire on June 30.
OFS Transaction
Record type: EVENT. This is the most recent transaction (dues payment) for the member. The date field contains the date of the transaction. The place field describes the transaction, for example: "$5 dues". The memo field stores the new expiration date resulting from this transaction and may be used for auditing purposes.
OFS History
Record type: NOTE. This contains a history of transaction records for the member. It can be used for auditing purposes. This field should not be edited manually; new transactions are added via a procedure described later.

Because the records listed above are person records as opposed to family records, OFS member addresses must be stored in the member's personal address tab, not the family address tab. Reunion provides a drop-down menu for easily cutting and pasting addresses between tabs.

The following subchapters describe various procedures for managing and maintaining the membership list within Reunion.