What Is It?
Using The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding – Online genealogy software, users are able to contribute the genealogy information from their websites to a central database (the GENDEX Database) that is searchable by anyone. Once somebody finds an entry they are interested in, clicking on that entry takes them to the website that contributed that information. The information itself isn’t stored in the main database, just a record of names and a few relevant details, along with the originating website.
It can be accessed here.
Background
From Dick Eastman: GENDEX was a method of indexing genealogy information spread across many web sites. It was created by Gene Stark. His web site, www.gendex.com, was a genealogy search engine that indexed more than 22,000 online databases of genealogical information on 60 million people. That means you could search the data from many Web sites by visiting only one site. When you found something that looked worthwhile, you clicked on the name on www.gendex.com and then got transferred to the original source of information on another site.
The GENDEX site was shut down on April 22, 2004, apparently due to financial issues. I see that the domain name of gendex.com has now been re-issued to another company that is not involved with genealogy.
Now there is new hope for GENDEX; it has been “married” to The Next Generation. Multiple web sites running The Next Generation software are now supplying RSS feeds of their data, which is then merged together into one GENDEX site.