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Nu?
What's New? Gary Mokotoff, Editor Volume 14, Number 40 | October 13, 2013 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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Considering Hiring a Professional Genealogist?
More than 2,600 people worldwide consider their profession (part-time or full time) to be family history research. They are all members of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). There are a number of reasons why you might want to hire a professional genealogist: • You cannot devote enough time to your family history research and are willing to hire a professional to do the work. • You have hit a brick wall and want help from an experienced person. • Research is required in another geographic area, and it would be too expensive to travel to the location. Visit the APG site at http://apgen.org. Use the “Find a Researcher” function to locate a professional who is listed by research specialty (e.g. Jewish), geographic specialty (e.g. Lithuania) or location (where professional resides). For example, if I know specific records exist in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I will hire someone who lives in the area to get the records. It is less time consuming and probably less costly than having the microfilms sent to a local Family History Center. One advantage of hiring an APG member is that the organization has a dispute resolution process where they will arbitrate disagreements between a client and the professional. The complaint is processed by their Professional Review Committee. If the conclusion is that the professional violated the APG Code of Ethics and the matter is not corrected, the professional will lose his/her membership in the organization. JewishGen also has a list of professional genealogists who do research in Central and Eastern Europe. Most live in their native lands. Included with the name of each person is the name of the individual doing the recommending along with their e-mail address. The list is at http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/researchers.htm. FamilySearch Additions for the Week 
Recent additions to FamilySearch, both indexes and browseable images, can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/node/2408.
This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They
include records from Argentina, BillionGraves, Canada, Denmark,
Germany, Italy and the U.S. states of Illinois and Ohio. Included are
more than 1.6 million index entries to Canada Passenger Lists,
1881–1922. The index is still a work-in-progress and appears to
go only through about 1910. Also nearly a million records were added to
their index for Ohio County Marriages, 1789–1994.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 in the announcement are the number added, not the total number available in the collection. New Site Has Israeli Tombstones A posting to JewishGen notes that there is a new website that has images of headstones in five cemeteries in Israel. It is located at http://neshama.info. The site is in Hebrew. The five cemeteries are Yarkon (which is located near Petach Tikva, and serves Tel Aviv and its satellite cities), Modi'in cemetery, Atlit cemetery, Kibbutz Yechiam cemetery and Kibbutz Ma'oz Chayim. There are plans to add additional cemeteries. If you are familiar with the Hebrew alphabet and do not have a Hebrew keyboard, use the Steven P. Morse “English to Hebrew Transliteration” function to create the Hebrew characters. The Levy Test demonstrates there are only four persons named Levy in the database. Study Claims Ancestors of Contemporary Jews Were “Shiksas” Once again the question of whom contemporary Jews are descended from has become controversial based on a study at University of Huddersfield in England which concludes that mitochodrial DNA shows that the female ancestors of today’s Jews were not Jewish but European women who married Jewish men and converted to Judaism. A previous mitochondrial DNA study in 2006 showed origins in the Near East. The current researchers state the 2006 study analyzed only a short length of the mitochondrial DNA, while the current study looked at the entire mitochondrial genome. Such studies can take on political significance because anti-Israel proponents will claim that scientific evidence demonstrates today’s Jews are not descended from biblical Jews and, therefore, are not entitled to a presence in the Holyland. The New York Times version of the news release can be found at http://tinyurl.com/NYTMito. FamilySearch Photo Archives Reaches One Million Images The FamilySearch Photo Archive located at https://familysearch.org/photos/ now has more than one million images. Persons are encouraged to submit pictures of their family identifying the people in the pictures. The photos are public and can be seen without signing in. An invitation to see a photo can be shared socially through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and email. By clicking on a shared link, the visitor is taken directly to the photo for viewing. The announcement can be found at https://familysearch.org/node/2379.
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| Nu?
What's New?
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