|
|
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Gelvan Vital Records distribution
Translations have been received for the following records:
Births: 1854 - 1872 ex. 1862
Deaths: 1854 - 1872 [contiguous]
The translations have been sent to qualified contributors.
An assessment will be made to see how much more we can translate with remaining funds.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Podberezhe Vital Records
For the past two years or so, our Argentinean volunteer Diana Kriwicky has diligently been translating the vital records
for Podberezhe, working from dual language records. Many of these records are extremely difficult to read and accounts for
the time required to complete these records. Distribution of the Podberezhe translations must be held out of necessity, since
these must be proofed with special attention paid to names and places which were difficult to read.
There are some records Diana did not translate since they were only in Russian. These will be sent out for translation
in a few months time. Hopefully, the Podberezhe translations will be sent out by early spring.
More Vilna births and death records sent for translation
A significant set of Vilna vital records has just been sent to one of our translators. The decision was made to translate
additional early records with the funds in hand as we have a very short list of translators capable of working with these
particular records. The records sent out are the births for the years 1839 - 1854 and the deaths from 1837 - 1846.
A few volunteers are working other Vilna records including Bruce Zatz, who is working on the marriage records for the
late 19th Century. Solly Radowsky is working on the 1901 death records and Yaakov Rakhmilevich has just completed the
1874 births and is moving onto the 1875 births.
Balbieriskis Translations completed
The complete set of filmed vital records were recently translated and distributed:
Births: 1828, 1889, 1903
Deaths: 1828, 1889, 1903
Marriages: 1828, 1903
A listing received from the Vilna Archives shows there are far more unfilmed records waiting to be translated. Balbieriskis
researchers are therefore encouraged to contribute to see these records translated. The unfilmed records go all the way back
to the second decade of the 19th Century!
Olkeniki [Valkininkai] translations distributed
The following translations have recently been distributed:
Births: 1857, 1870 - 1872, 1874 - 1880
Deaths: 1871, 1872, 1875 - 1880
Butrimonys Translations Distributed
The following translations have been distributed to qualified members of the project:
Births: 1866 - 1875, 1878
Ziezmariai Translations Distributed
The following translations have been distributed to qualified members:
Births: 1878 - 1885, 1887 - 1893, 1896 - 1904, 1906 - 1915
Deaths: 1855, 1866, 1878 - 1891, 1893 - 1896, 1900 - 1906, 1909, 1910, 1912 - 1914
|
|
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.
|
