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Friday, February 24, 2006
Kernave Records Completed
The vital records translation effort for Kernave has been completed. There are precious few records for this town, consisting
of the births recorded for the year 1870.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
Translations Received for Shirvint
Translations were received earlier this week for all VRI records uniquely defined as Shirvint records. The translations
are being proofed and will be distributed shortly to qualified donors.
In addition, there are records labeled "Vilna County" which pertain to five or six different towns in a sub-district
of Vilna County. This area was known as the 2nd okrug of Vilna County. Records in the 2nd okrug category cover several towns
- Gelvan, Shirvint, Musnik, Paberze, Boguslaviskis and Mikaliskes. Funds are needed to translate these records as well, so
all researchers interested in Shirvint and the other 2nd okrug towns mentioned above may contribute to this effort by using
the VRI donor form on the Download page and specifying their donation under the category "Vilna County". For researchers interested
in the towns other than Shirvint, please realize the basic records for those towns, with the exception of Mikaliskes, have
not been sufficiently funded to allow translation to begin. It would be most prudent to donate to the specific town records
first, and helping fund the Vilna County records at a later time. Shirvint researchers are encouraged to contribute
to the Vilna County records at this time. Approximately $2000 - $2500 is required to fund the 2nd okrug records. These records
will be put in the translation queue as soon as we achieve $500 in donations.
Translations Completed for Rasein
Earlier this week, the translations of all VRI records for Rasein were received. The records are being proofed and will
be distributed to qualified Rasein contributors shortly.
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The Vital Records Indexing Project grew out of the newly gained access to the Lithuanian Archives
in the late 1990s. The Archives and the Family History Library [FHL or Mormons] came to an agreement which allowed
the filming of the metrical register books. These books cover the 19th Century and include 20th Century
records through 1915.
LitvakSIG came to agreement with the Archives and the FHL which provides LitvakSIG with digital images
[TIF files] of the vital records in exchange for translations we produce.
The Records
The images
contain records for 100 towns which were in Vilna and Kovno gubernias, with a few towns from Suwalki gubernia as well. Prior
to conversion to digital format, the records were contained on 225 microfilms. There are approximately 200,000 unique images
and with an average of 4 records per page, there are approximately 800,000 records in total. This estimate is after subtracting
20% of the films to account for the approximate number of duplicate pages, register book cover pages, etc. The list of towns
represented was developed by FHL and JewishGen and posted to the JewishGen web site. Updates to this list have been required
and LitvakSIG maintains the current version of this information – more on that later.
The Translations
The images provided to LitvakSIG are organized by the microfilm they came from, rather
than the town the records cover. LitvakSIG received the films as digital images and began translating various films. It was
immediately apparent this was not an efficient way to proceed, since records for many towns exist on a single film [sometimes
over 10 towns per film]. We have taken the 200,000 images and have reordered the images by town. We are now better able to
coordinate the translations on a town by town basis.
The Translators
The beginning of the translation effort saw a few volunteer translators come forth, although
the primary need is for paid translators. The project is of such a large scope it is necessary to employ paid translators.
Some of the translations submitted by volunteers are of good quality, whereas others had to be scrapped. We are currently
reformatting and correcting some of the early work to save that which is useable.
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