IAJGS2014 Conference - Day 5

Day 5 of the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy.  My entire summary, day by day, here.

UkraineSIG has procured many new vital records, transcribed many others, etc.  Janette Silverman gave an overview of the great work in records procurement that has been done this year,

New records including lists of Courland Jews traveling to Kherson agriculture communities in 1837 and 1840. There is a volunteer translator already working on these.  12,000 records are already done and there should be 12,000 to 18,000 more.

There should be an official report coming out later this month through the UkraineSIG discussion group and Facebook with a lot of news.

Joel Soector, volunteer coordinator, talked about the need for volunteers and now to become a volunteer.  There are multiple ongoing projects with a need for translators.  UkraineSIG has a skills survey that can be filled out to demonstrate skills. People with skills in Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish are needed.

All of UkraineSIG is volunteer. You can organize projects to acquire and transliterated your towns' records.  UkraineSIG will help you to get the data integrated into JewishGen's Ukraine database.

Phyllis Berenson gave an example of how she runs a town project for Mogilev-Podolski.  She talked about acquire documents, translating, and fundraising.  She gave examples of where someone found a documents, another where someone had visited the town and was given a book by a local with a listing of holocaust victims, and Yizkor books. Also, the CAHJP in Jerusalem has many documents. UkraineSIG has many catalog cards for those documents--and there were documents from her town.

Yoni Kupchik undertook a proposal last year and raised funds to acquire 10,000 pages of a vital records index from 1875-1920. Transcriptors are needed--it is very clearly written in Cyrillic.

Chuck Weinstein spoke via Skype about the Town Leader program. We have 3,406 subscribers to UkraineSIG discussion group, which makes it the largest SIG discussion group.  There are 204 town leaders representing 194 towns. There are 950+ towns with significant past Jewish population that still need Town Leaders.  There are people who will help you build websites to help you tell stories and show pictures of your town on a KehilaLinks page.  You can also coordinate projects to acquire, transcribe, and get online documents.

CAHJP has an individual who travels into Europe and works with individual archives to be able to digitize pages.  Last summer, we got 50GB from those efforts.  They are working on getting the jewish records digitized from Ternipol archives. They are reaching agreements with Kiev.  Estimated cost will be $5000--should be a huge treasure trove of information.  Hey have ordered the metrical records from Khelminitski.  Collaboration has been re established with Zhitomer, and they will be digitizing all of its Jewish holdings.  There are initial communications with Vinnitsa as well.

Harvey Kabaker is heading up a project to scan the Family History Library's Jewish Ukraine holdings.  Volunteers are needed to help with the scanning project.  Records include birth, marriage, death and more.

I also attended a "21st'ers lunch" which again addressed the issue of engaging the younger generation. More great ideas--and a great view of Salt Lake City and the mountains from the 18th floor!

I'm heading to the airport shortly. This has been a great week. Lots of learning, networking and reconnecting with genealogy friends. Next year in Jerusalem!