Searchable sources added to Genealogy Indexer this week:
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Courtesy of the Miriam Weiner Archival Collection, with assistance from the Library of Congress, Genealogy Indexer is delighted to announce that the following 75 Ukrainian telephone directories from 1970 to 1994 are now full-text searchable at genealogyindexer.org. These directories were collected by renowned genealogist Miriam Weiner over her decades-long pioneering career in Jewish genealogy, donated to the Library of Congress in 2016, scanned meticulously by the Library of Congress for preservation and presentation on their website, and, finally, OCR'd by us and added this week to the search engine. The Library of Congress' European Division also obtained the necessary permissions to share this important material online. We thank Miriam Weiner, the Library of Congress, and the Ukrainian Embassy for making this possible.
The directories cover many towns and districts throughout what is today Ukraine, corresponding to territory formerly in the historical regions of Galicia, Bukovina, Carpathian Ruthenia, and seven gubernias of the Russian Empire: Chernigov, Kharkov, Kherson, Kiev, Podolia, Poltava, and Volhynia. There was previously no post-WWII coverage of most of these locations and there is very little pre-WWII coverage of many of the non-Galician places. So, there is a great potential for researchers to learn new information, especially about families separated by the Iron Curtain, and we encourage anyone with roots in Ukraine to search these additions (also, if you know Ukrainian researchers, please share). Two easy ways to search: change the Regular Sort option below the search box to New Matches First or, to restrict a search to only the Miriam Weiner Archival Collection, append {weiner} to your search term.
The directories are written in Ukrainian and Russian, but you do not need to know any Ukrainian or Russian to search. If your search term consists of a single word (e.g., a surname), the search results will automatically include Ukrainian and Russian transliterations by default. To interpret the results, however, you might need to understand Ukrainian or Russian, or seek assistance from someone who does. You can also enter search terms in Ukrainian or Russian, which can be helpful if you use advanced search syntax (e.g., searching for a phrase like a street address, or searching for pages on which both a surname and village name appear).
More to come from the Miriam Weiner Archival Collection
As many of you know, beginning in 1989, Miriam Weiner has traveled extensively throughout Eastern Europe conducting genealogical research in archives big and small, not only in Ukraine. In addition to these directories, she also donated to the Library of Congress directories from Belarus, Lithuania, and Moldova post-WWII, and more from Ukraine and Russia pre-WWII, which we hope to add to the search engine in the future.
And more at the bottom of this message
Please read to the bottom of this message for several other announcements and additions.
This week's additions from the Miriam Weiner Archival Collection
Galicia
- 1988 Berezhany District Telephone Directory
- 1992 Borshchiv District Telephone Directory
- 1987 Buchach District Telephone Directory
- 1980 Chortkiv District Telephone Directory
- 1986 Dolyna District Telephone Directory
- 1972 Drohobych Telephone Directory
- 1983 Ivano-Frankivsk Telephone Directory
- 1976 Ivano-Frankivsk Telephone Directory
- 1970 Ivano-Frankivsk Telephone Directory (Businesses, Institutions, Organizations), Vol. I
- 1970 Ivano-Frankivsk Telephone Directory (Businesses, Institutions, Organizations), Vol. II
- 1988 Monastyryska District Telephone Directory
- 1977 Rozhniativ District Telephone Directory
- 1983 Sniatyn District Telephone Directory
- 1993 Sokal District Telephone Directory
- 1992 Staryi Sambir District Telephone Directory
- 1987 Stryi Telephone Directory
- 1989 Yavoriv District Telephone Directory
- 1989 Zolochiv Telephone Directory
- 1977 Zolochiv Telephone Directory
Bukovina
- 1992 Storozhynets Telephone Directory
- 19?? Toporivtsi Telephone Directory (Apartments)
- 1986 Vyzhnytsia District Telephone Directory
Carpathian Ruthenia
- 1984 Khmilnyk Telephone Directory
- 1988 Uzhhorod Telephone Directory
Chernigov Gubernia
- 1984 Hlukhiv District Telephone Directory
- 1988 Konotop District Telephone Directory
- 1974 Nizhyn Telephone Directory
Kharkov Gubernia
- 1993 Sumy Telephone Directory
Kherson Gubernia
- 1975 Voznesensk District Telephone Directory
Kiev Gubernia
- 1973 Berdychiv Telephone Directory
- 1992 Bila Tserkva Telephone Directory
- 1985 Bila Tserkva Telephone Directory
- 1977 Bila Tserkva Telephone Directory
- 1991 Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi District Telephone Directory
- 1992 Lypovets District Telephone Directory
- 1977 Lysianka District Telephone Directory
- 1987 Shpola District Telephone Directory
- 1989 Stavyshche Telephone Directory (Businesses, Institutions, Organizations)
- 1993 Talne District Telephone Directory
- 1989 Zvenyhorodka District Telephone Directory
Podolia Gubernia
- 1986 Bar Telephone Directory
- 1988 Kamianets-Podilskyi District Telephone Directory
- 1993 Khmelnytskyi Telephone Directory, Part I
- 1993 Khmelnytskyi Telephone Directory, Part II
- 1989 Khmelnytskyi Telephone Directory
- 1979 Khmelnytskyi Telephone Directory
- 1976 Khmelnytskyi District Telephone Directory
- 1992 Mohyliv-Podilskyi Telephone Directory
- 1972 Mykolaiv Telephone Directory
- 1993 Nova Ushytsia Telephone Directory
- 1985 Nova Ushytsia District Telephone Directory
- 1993 Sharhorod District Telephone Directory
- 1984 Trostianets District Telephone Directory
- 1987 Tulchyn Telephone Directory
- 1985 Vinkivtsi District Telephone Directory
- 1990 Yampil Telephone Directory
Poltava Gubernia
- 1989 Lubny Telephone Directory
- 1978 Pryluky District Telephone Directory
- 1992 Romny Telephone Directory
Volhynia Gubernia
- 1984 Dubno Telephone Directory
- 1989 Hoshcha District Telephone Directory
- 1993 Kamin-Kashyrskyi District Telephone Directory
- 1981 Korets Telephone Directory
- 1986 Krasyliv District Telephone Directory
- 1988 Liuboml District Telephone Directory
- 1992 Lutsk Telephone Directory (Businesses, Institutions, Organizations)
- 1977 Novohrad-Volynskyi Telephone Directory
- 1988 Ostroh District Telephone Directory
- 1994 Polonne District Telephone Directory
- 1993 Shepetivka District Telephone Directory
- 1977 Shepetivka Telephone Directory
- 1986 Starokostiantyniv District Telephone Directory
- 1972 Starokostiantyniv District Telephone Directory
- 1990 Turiisk District Telephone Directory
- 1986 Zhytomyr Telephone Directory
Other additions from the Library of Congress
We are also pleased to add the following Croatian directories separately digitized by the Library of Congress. These are the first additions of post-WWII directories with Croatian coverage (some pre-WWII directories with broad European coverage include Croatia). Please note that the geographic scope of the directories "Zagreb Telephone District Directory" and "Rijeka, Pula, and Surroundings Telephone Directory" are much broader than their titles might suggest. In general, if you find matches in these directories, do not ignore them because you think your family is not from near Zagreb, for example, inspect every matching page to see what are the corresponding towns.
Croatia
- 1953 Dalmatia Telephone Directory
- 1952 Dalmatia Telephone Directory
- 1956 Rijeka, Pula, and Surroundings Telephone Directory
- 1967 Slavonia Telephone Directory
- 1964 Zagreb Telephone District Directory
- 1959 Zagreb Telephone District Directory (Businesses)
- 1951 Zagreb Telephone District Directory
- 1948 Zagreb Telephone District Directory
Yizkor book news
Thanks to cooperation from the New York Public Library's Dorot Jewish Division, links to yizkor book scans from our search results, recently broken, are now largely working again. The breaks occurred due to changes in the New York Public Library's online presentation of the yizkor books (which remained remarkably stable for 10 years). Working with the Dorot Jewish Division, we were able to fix the links and point them, in most cases, to higher-resolution scans from the Yiddish Book Center. The higher-resolution images are great for printing and, as you might have guessed, for OCRing! We plan to soon resume OCRing yizkor books in large quantities, using these higher-resolution images to yield more accurate results, which was a dream for a long time. We will start with the yizkor books we have never OCR'd, then re-OCR the 300+ we previously OCR'd with the lower-resolution scans. (Actually, we did re-OCR a few already, for Bessarabia, Bialystok, Bobruisk, Des, Lithuania, and Mosty-Wielkie.)
When searching yizkor books on our site, you might temporarily see a notice about some links potentially being off by one or a few pages -- this probably only occurs in about 5% of books and will be fixed when we re-OCR them, but, in the meantime, when you click on a link in a search result and are taken to a yizkor book scan, keep in mind that you might have to page forward or backward a little to find the match.
Also remember that when you search yizkor books with Latin-letter search terms, you probably want to change the default transliteration option from Add Latin → Cyrillic to Add Latin → Cyrillic + Hebrew in order to find matches in Hebrew or Yiddish (click More Options below the search box to do this). Or, you can enter Hebrew or Yiddish search terms. There are some reminders about this, in case you forget, and I plan (eventually...) to change the reminder system so it will be obvious whether there are Hebrew or Yiddish matches you should explore (without overwhelming the search results when those matches aren't likely to be relevant, which is the case for many users and searches).
By the way, the Dorot Jewish Division has a great new guide to their yizkor book collection, which you might also want to check out, especially if you are interested in a yizkor book we have not yet OCR'd: https://libguides.nypl.org/yizkorbooks. Thanks again to their cooperation, there are now search boxes on their site that enable visitors to search the yizkor books we have OCR'd, which will hopefully help researchers who are not genealogists and have not heard of Genealogy Indexer.
Social media campaign for photos, stories of pre-Holocaust family property #MyPropertyStory
The World Jewish Restitution Organization (wjro.org.il) just launched a social media campaign running until Yom HaShoah (May 2) called #MyPropertyStory that asks Holocaust survivors or their families to post photos, statements, or video about their family property before the Holocaust with the hashtag #MyPropertyStory and tagging @WJRORestitution. Or, if they do not use social media but want to participate, they can email the information to mypropertystory@wjro.org.il. At the end of the campaign, WJRO will share some of the stories on its website. The goal is to "raise awareness about the need to address the restitution of Jewish private and communal property seized during the Holocaust." You can find more details at https://wjro.org.il/
Thanks for reading this far, it has been a long update, but also long overdue. I am finally beginning to catch up on my to-do list for Genealogy Indexer, which is, however, continuing to grow at the same time. Thanks to users who have notified me about new content to add, there is a lot in the pipeline: more directories and also other kinds of genealogical sources that can be made searchable using OCR. As always, if you see scans of typewritten documents online, with a lot of names but no search functionality, please let me know. Or, if you have access to such documents offline, perhaps we can arrange for them to be scanned.
Logan