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Sunday, October 29, 2006
Vilna 1889 Deaths Indexed
I have just received the 1889 Vilna death index. These will also be proofed and sent out to qualified Vilna donors.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Vilna Record Indexing - 1886 - 1888 Deaths Completed
I am pleased to announce the death records for the city of Vilna have been indexed. This amounts to just over 3700 records.
These translations are currently being proofed and embellished. They will be distributed to qualified Vilna [city] donors
as soon as they are ready.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Vilna Record Indexing - 1882 Births Completed
I am pleased to announce the completion of the 1882 Vilna birth record indexing effort.
Friday, October 6, 2006
VRT Site Update - Vilna Surnames
This site has just been updated to include surnames found in a broad section of vital records. The names were extracted
from the Vilna city vital records for the years 1854 - 1857, 1861, and 1883 - 1888. Rather than just listing the surname,
a comprehensive listing is given, showing all instances of the surname found so far, including the year of each record.
These listings are intended to aid researchers, especially where their surnames have never been identified in Vilna to
date. The other side of this is the practical aspect - the VRT project needs funding from you to enable the full translations
of these and all Vilna vital records. The Vilna vital records we have span the time period from 1837 - 1915.
Please take this opportunity to make your $100 donation to the Vilna Vital Records. You can do so by going to the
Downloads page, printing the Donor form, and following the instructions contained therein.
Thursday, October 5, 2006
First Vilna city Vital Records Translations Distributed
I am pleased to announce the vital records for the city of vilna for the year 1861 were distributed to qualified donors.
Several surnames of current Vilna researchers have been identified. These translations included 1134 births, 1200 deaths,
173 marriages and 37 divorces.
Researchers interested in receiving these translations can go to the Downloads page, print out the Donor form, and send
in a minimum of $100 to pay for the cost of translation.
Division of VRT Responsibilities
Here is an update on how VRT project responsibilities are now broken up - I [Joel Ratner] will be handling all Vilna
and Suwalki gubernia towns as well as the Kovno city, Vilijampole [Slobodka], and Vilkija efforts. All other Kovno gubernia
inquiries should be sent to Aaron Roetenberg, the LitvakSIG treasurer.
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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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