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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Additional Snipishok births completed
The following birth records have been translated by a volunteer:
Births: 1895, 1899
We are in need of additional funds in order fund paid translations of additional records for Snipishok. Only a few researchers
have expressed an interest in this town, yet it is only 1 mile from Vilna! If you have beenb jsearching in Vilna and
have not found your family yet, please consider supporting the translation of records for the immediate suburbs of Vilna [Snipishok,
Novygorod and Antokol].
Vilna Translations continue coming in
Over the last month I have received translations of the following Vilna city vital records from our volunteers:
Deaths 1878
Marriages 1859, 1860, 1866, 1876 - 1878
As with all translations performed by volunteers, these will be proofed and sent out to qualified donors as further receipts
warrant. Please support the Vilna Vital Records Translation Project.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Vilna Births 1866 - 1873
I have heard from the translator the first of these records [2 or 3 years worth] will be available in several weeks.
Once these are completed, additional birth records for 1874 - 1881 will be sent for translation.
First Translations Completed for Snipishok [Snipiskes]
Snipishok is one of the three towns adjacent to Vilna for which there are separate metrical register books. There are
few researchers actively searching in this town, at least as indicated by the JewishGen FamilyFinder. Raising the necessary
funds has therefore been difficult and much remains to be done. In order to prevent these records from languishing untranslated
for much longer, I began to translate some of the birth records. The births for 1894 have been completed and will be sent
to Snipishok researchers. Additional birth records for Snipishok will be translated, in an attempt to assist generating
some interest.
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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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