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Friday, February 27, 2009
Bagaslaviskis death and marriages completed
Translations of the death and marriage records have been received as follows:
Deaths: 1854 - 1856, 1858 - 1870,
1872
Marriages: 1854 - 1861, 1863 - 1870, 1872
Additional records for Bagaslaviskis are contained in the "Vilna
County" vital records. Those wishing to continue with research in this town are encouraged to donate to the Vilna County
records which provides translations of vital rcords from many Vilna district towns.
11:28 am est
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Surpassing the 150,000 / 100,000 record marks
December 2008 marked two significant acheivements on the VRT project. Aaron Roetenberg completed the translation
of the 150,000th vital record for his Kovno gubernia towns. Congratulations are in order for Aarons efforts. If
your interest is in Kovno gubernia towns, contact Aaron and congratulate him for this acheivement. Better yet, Aaron
is in need of funding for several major translation efforts. Please consider giving a little extra to show your appreciation
for his efforts.
The Vilna / Suwalki gubernia translation effort reached the 100,000 record mark in December. Translations are now complete
for 12 towns. The largest achievement has been the Vilna city vital records. This project has completed over 80,000 translations
through the end of Dec. 2008. This is in large part due to the force of volunteers that came forth. These volunteers include
Bruce Zatz, Rabbi Nosson Vershubsky, Dmitry Shirochin, Yaacov Rakhmilevitch, Andre Molchanov, Diana Kriwicky and myself.
Olkeniki (Valkininkai) marriages and divorces sent for translation
The Olkeniki marriage and divorce records have been sent to a translator. These are expected to be completed in March
2009.
Bagaslaviskis Birth records translated
Translations have been received and distributed for the following birth records:
Births: 1854, 1855, 1857 - 1860, 1861, 1863, 1864 - 1867, 1869 - 1872
Death and marriage rcords have also been sent out for translation. The translations are scheduled to be received in late March
2009.
Mikailiskis vital records completed
The remaining translations for Mikailiskis have been distributed. They are as follows:
Deaths: 1879, 1885 - 1887, 1908
Additional records for this town are part of the Vilna County records. Rsearchers interested in these records are encouraged
to contribute towards their translation.
Podberezhe Russian only records
I mentioned last October there were many records for Podberezhe which were only in Russian. These have now been translated
and have been distributed.
Births: 1838 - 1853, 1861, 1869
Deaths: 1838 - 1853, 1862, 1869
Marriages: 1838 - 1853, 1885
The first translations provided by Diana Kriwicky will need to be sent out to a paid translator to answer
many outstanding questions as well as provide some corrections. we will need several more Podberezhe researchers to enable
this to occur this spring. Please contact me if you are interested in these records and can assist financially.
Merkine death records distribution
The following death records for Merkine have been distributed to qualified donors:
Deaths: 1855, 1860, 1861, 1864, 1865, 1867, 1870-1875
Additional death records for Merkine in hand cover the years 1877 - 1914. These records are already partially indexed.
Volunteers who are interested in Merkine may want to accelerate the distribution of these records by volunteering to produce
an Excel spreadsheet from the index. The index is in Latin characters, so language should not be a problem. Anyone interested
in performing this task should contact me.
Completion of Butrimonys birth records
The Butrimonys birth records have been completed with the distribution of the following records:
Births: 1881-1884, 1888-1890, 1899-1909
Gelvan Vital Records Distribution
It has been several months now since I've updated the blog, but there has been significant activity going on in the background.
The Gelvan vital records have been completed with the distribution of the following records:
Births: 1862
Marriages: 1854-1872
Additional records for Gelvan exisat as part of the Vilna County collection. Researchers interwsted in further records
for Gelvan are encouraged to donate to the Vilna County VRT records.
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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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