The last three years have taken their toll including changing plans for transforming the NolanFamilies.org website into one capable of becoming over time the #1 online research archive for Nolan family researchers everywhere.

The initial vision was to split the effort into three initiatives:

• setting up a knowledge base infrastructure for storing Nolan-related information from around the world (family stories, Nolan memorial inscriptions, family research notes, …)

• writing and publishing an online living Nolan family history book with the vision that it be updated over time based upon new findings resulting from ongoing worldwide Nolan family research, much like the Wikipedia pages

• gathering sufficient seminal Nolan family stories to inform the writing of the sections of the online Nolan family history book relating to those early Nolan emigrants who settled in foreign lands (or for that matter in other parts of Ireland).

This initial vision still stands but somewhat humbled by recent recent setbacks (COVID-19 pandemic, urgent family matters and major technological problems … in essence the realities of life) I now believe that a more reasonable timeline for the project is the 2025-2027 timeframe at which time I would hope to divest myself of the ongoing maintenance and management of the archival infrastructure.

To emphasize the focus of the Nolanfamilies.org website as an archive I have taken the initiative to move parts of the original 2004 website to websites of their own. In essence:

• the part of the former website providing basic information about the Nolan Clan family association (Clann O Nuallain or Clan O Nolan) has now been moved to its own separate webspace (https://nolanfamilies.org/nolanclan/) as a stand-alone website ready to be ported to a new web address under direct control of the Nolan Clan and its appointed webmaster
• the part of the former website relating to support for Nolan family research has now been moved to a new free website hosted on the Groups.io servers (https://groups.io/g/nolanfamilies/) and a new NolanFamilies Research Group created.

I recognize that this project initiative is ambitious and welcome any offers of help in implementing the Nolanfamilies.org archive, something which I hope will outlast myself. We do not live forever and, as I am realizing more than ever, I must pass the torch.

If you feel that you could help with this project in some capacity do not hesitate to contact me.