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Nu?
What's New? Gary Mokotoff, Editor Volume 13, Number 50 | December 16, 2012 Every
government puts value on preserving its history. That is why we have
national archives. Genealogy preserves history; the history of a
family. It cannot be done without access to records, just as historians
cannot preserve a nation's history without access to records. It is a
greater good than the right to privacy. It is a greater good than the
risk of identity theft.
Past issues of Nu? What's New? are
archived at http://www.avotaynu.com/nu.htm
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Israel Genealogy Research Association Has New Search Engine
 The
Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) website has a new search
engine providing greater flexibility to accessing the more than 100,000
records at their site. It can be found at http://www.genealogy.org.il/AID/.
Searches can be done in English, Hebrew (there is a virtual keyboard)
or a combination. There is a Names Thesaurus enabling you to receive
options you may not have considered checking. For example, when
searching for Rebecca Levy, results included Rivka Levy. Filter options
allow limiting the search to a specific area or areas. You must be
registered (free) in order to access that page.IGRA has compiled a wide variety of databases based on information in libraries, archives and collections. All of their databases deal with people who had some connection to Israel from the Ottoman, British or Israeli Administration. The new search engine was developed with the assistance of Brooke Schreir Ganz who developed the Gesher Galicia site search engine. Ganz won Second Place in the RootsTech 2012 Developer Challenge Award for creating LeafSeek, a system that helps turn genealogical or historical record collections into searchable online databases. It had its origins in the work she did for the All-Galicia Database. Finding Aid for Toronto Census of 1911 A few years ago AVOTAYNU Book Review editor, Bill Gladstone, developed a website containing useful and background information about the Jewish presence in Toronto. It is located at http://www.billgladstone.ca. He regularly adds items to the site. His latest addition is a finding aid to the 1911 Canadian census for the area of Toronto that was heavily populated by Jews. It is located at http://www.billgladstone.ca/?p=8245. The “Street Guide to the Jewish of Toronto in the Canadian Census of 1911” offers researchers a way of finding relatives in the 1911 census who do not turn up in a nominal search at Ancestry.com. As the article explains: “Frequently the problem occurs because a family name is terribly misspelled in the index due to messy handwriting, or due to a faded, smeared or otherwise illegible census page.” The Street Guide allows researchers to find a family using the street address alone, something you cannot do at Ancestry or on the Library and Archives Canada website where the 1911 census is also accessible. Essentially it lists each page of the census in the Toronto area, shows the addresses on the page, and gives a rough indication as to how many Jewish families were living there. The Street Guide includes a street map of Toronto ca. 1911 (many of the streets have changed and some no longer exist) as well as a sketch map of the various electoral districts at the time. If you want read a taste of what Jewish life was like in Canada in the early part of the 20th century, visit the site. There are numerous articles gleaned from this period. Examples from 1909 indicate that the Toronto police raided the National Matzo and Biscuit Company because they were operating on Sunday. Also there is a list of European Jews seeking relatives in Canada, 1922. Importance of Town Leaders In the past I have discussed the importance of volunteering to help grow Special Interest Groups (SIGs), organizations that focus on genealogical needs primarily by country of ancestry. Equally important is that many of these SIGs have subdivisions by town of ancestry. For example, Chuck Weinstein, Towns and Districts Director for the Ukraine SIG, notes in a recent posting to their Discussion Group that they now have 172 Town Leaders. However, many larger towns, he says, do not have anyone who has volunteered to lead the effort to find and digitize records of people who lived and died there. In order to get these records online, Ukraine SIG needs Town Leaders, people who are willing to help organize researchers to enter data into spreadsheets, transliterate either printed or cursive Russian into English, and to contribute to KehilaLinks (town) pages on JewishGen. To help the Ukraine SIG by becoming a Town Leader, contact Weinstein at cmw521@earthlink.net. This is not a problem peculiar to the Ukraine effort. A list of SIGs can be found at http://www.jewishgen.org/JewishGen/sigs.htm. Link to the country/countries of your ancestry to determine how you can volunteer to assist in growing the online information about your towns of ancestry. Fold3 Has Navy Muster Rolls (1939–1949) If you have relatives that served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Fold3 is adding to its collection “Muster Rolls of U.S. Navy Ships, Stations, and Other Naval Activities, compiled 01/01/1939 – 01/01/1949.” These are reports of enlisted personnel formally attached to ships, stations, or other commands (known as “activities”). To date more than 70,000 images are available online at http://www.fold3.com/title_829/wwii_navy_muster_rolls/. This represents only about four percent of the rolls and the amount is growing daily. FamilySearch Additions for the Week Recent additions to FamilySearch, both indexes and browseable images, can be found at https://familysearch.org/node/1930. They include records from Canada, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Peru, and the United States. Note that at the website announced collections may not be complete for the dates specified and will be added at some later date. Also note that counts shown are the number added, not the total number available in the collection. New records include Estonia, Population Registers, 1918–1944 images appear to be complete; Czech Republic, Okres District, Censuses, 1843–1921 images; images of Northern District (Eastern Division), Naturalization Index, 1926–1979 now complete through the letter “N” and partially the letter “O.”; Indiana, Marriages, 1811–1959 index now 82% complete; Contribute to Genealogy Causes It is getting near the end of the year which is a good time for Americans to evaluate whether they have made tax-deductible contributions for 2012 to worthy genealogy causes. My two favorite are JewishGen and the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy. 
JewishGen.
We all use JewishGen throughout the year. We subscribe to its
Discussion Groups, are members of its Special Interest Groups, check
the JewishGen Family Finder from time to time to see if any new
listings involve your research areas. On occasion we use the Jewish
Community Finder when we come across a new town whose location is
unknown to us. When there is a document in a language we do not
understand, we post it to Viewmate so a volunteer can translate it. We
take advantage of the 20 million records JewishGen currently hosts and
view many of its 70,000 web pages.Do we contribute monetarily to its sustainment and growth? If you have not made your annual contribution to JewishGen, do it now on its JewisGen-erosity page at http://www.jewishgen.org/JewishGen-erosity. Consider contributing $100 for the year. If you do, you are entitled to Value Added Services described at http://www.jewishgen.org/jewishgen/valueadded.asp. 
International Institute for Jewish Genealogy (IIJG).
Not every worthwhile genealogy organization produces instant
gratification in the area of your personal family history research. The
primary goals of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy are
two-fold: • To advance the academic status of Jewish Genealogy within the field of Jewish Studies through research and teaching at the university level; • To contribute to Jewish continuity on the premise that knowledge of one’s roots helps assure a Jewish future. In a very short period of time, the Institute has made tangible progress in pursuing its goals at both the scholarly and broader Jewish levels. It has: • participated in international Jewish Studies conferences to promote family history as an academic discipline. • developed innovative tools and technologies, specifically designed for the Jewish family historian • elaborated Academic Guidelines” for BA and MA courses in Jewish genealogy • carried out many ground-breaking research projects. Actually, there has already been tangible value of general use from IIJG projects. The Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching System was a direct result of an ongoing IIJG project. Contribute to IIJG at http://iijg.org/Donate/Contributions.aspx.
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What's New?
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