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Nu?
What's New? Gary Mokotoff, Editor Volume 15, Number 39 | October 12, 2014 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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CNN
Celebrities Trace Their Roots
 Television shows
about tracing roots may have become the new
“in” programs as CNN now joins Who Do You Think You
Are? and Finding
Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates
Jr. in featuring the family history of some of its
better-known
newscasters. Beginning today, October 12, thirteen of the
network’s prominent hosts and anchors set out on a journey to
find their roots. It appears these stories will be integrated with the
regular programs these people host. Wolf Blitzer, who seems to be the only Jewish personality, will search his roots on Wednesday, October 15 at 5pm. Blitzer is the son of Holocaust survivors and will visit Yad Vashem in Jerusalem where he will discover his paternal grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz. He also visits ancestral towns in Poland. A complete list of programs and personalities can be found at http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/ 2014/10/06/cnn-hosts-journey-to-find-their-roots-2/?iref=allsearch. Next Year in Jerusalem! Registration Now Open for the IAJGS 35th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy  Registration
is now open for the IAJGS 35th International Conference on
Jewish Genealogy which will take place at the Jerusalem Ramada, July
6–10, 2015.The Conference website, http://www.iajgs2015.org, currently includes registration for those outside of Israel, a Call for Papers and basic information. Additional information on shekel-based registration, Family Finder, Exploration Sunday, Shabbaton and meal functions and more will be available shortly. Sign up for the Conference Discussion Group at http://lists.iajgs2015.org/mailman/listinfo/ discussion--3 to post messages and see other inquiries and announcements about the conference. It is also possible to follow the conference on Facebook or Twitter. The Conference is being held in cooperation with MyHeritage and with the support of individual, organizational and corporate sponsors presently including Harvey Krueger of New York and Yad Vashem. The sponsors listing will be updated from time to time. Have You Signed the Genealogists’ Declaration of Rights? With all the talk about privacy rights by other interest and political groups, the genealogical community created its own “Genealogists’ Declaration of Rights” last May. The Declaration of Rights is a statement advocating open access to federal, state, and local public records. The Declaration affirms America’s long history of open public records, which has been threatened the last few years over concerns about identity theft and privacy. Genealogists advocate the right of access to records held by government agencies including but not limited to vital records (births, marriages, deaths, divorces); land conveyances and mortgages; tax assessments; guardianships; probate of estates; criminal proceedings; suits of law and equity; immigration; military service and pensions; and acts of governmental entities. Genealogists further advocate that they need to be allowed access to original records when photocopies, microfilm, digital images, or other formats are insufficient to establish clear text, context, or completeness of the record. The rights of genealogists specified in the Declaration object to numerous barriers created to deny them access to records. We cannot have our voice heard in Congress without showing we are a formidable number of voters. Readers can read and sign the Declaration at http://tinyurl.com/GenealgyDoR. Do so now! JewishGen Offering Independent Study Class Again  JewishGen
is again offering its Independent Study class October 31 to
November 28, 2014. This class is open to your choice of project: your
topic, your research and your questions. The sessions will follow the
format of other JewishGen Education classes. It is post and reply,
one-on-one consultations via JewishGen’s private Internet
Forum.
The Forum is open 24/7 to accommodate all the time zones. In order to qualify for the class, submit a paragraph about your project to ensure that the instructor is able to meet your objectives. The application asks to submit your search surname, towns and goals. A course description and application is at http://www.jewishgen.org/education under Independent Study. Enrollment is limited to 10 students. Send your qualifying paragraph to Nancy Holden at nholden@interserv.com. Tuition is $150, paid after acceptance to the class. NARA Plans Three-day Webinar on Genealogy The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration will host a three-day genealogy webinar—October 28–30—on tips and techniques for using Federal records at NARA for genealogy research. It will cover Federal records such as census, American Indian, military, naturalization and immigration. Lectures are designed for experienced genealogists and novices. Additional information is at http://www.archivesfoundation.org/event/virtual-genealogy-fair-2014/. U.S. National Archives Has Strategic Plan to Digitize All Records Called “The Scan Plan,” the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has made as part of its Strategic Plan an initiative to digitize their analog records and make them available for online public access. NARA claims to have more than 12 billion pages of records. They plan to collaborate and build on efforts with private and public organizations to digitize the records. Additional information about the plan can be found at http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/?p=5717. FamilySearch Additions for the Week  A
list of recent additions to FamilySearch, 2.8 million indexed records
and images, can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/node/2580.
This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They
include records from Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ghana, Spain and the
New Mexico Territorial Census of 1885. Notable additions for Jewish family history research are more than 556,000 records from BillionGraves.com and additional images of British Columbia (Canada) marriage and death registrations. 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, which can be greater. Site Has Links to U.S. Historical Directories Directories are a potential resource because they place a person in a specific place at a specific time. One of the more remarkable collections is at http://Genealogyindexer.org where you can search and view more than 456,000 pages of historical directories (business, address, telephone, etc., primarily from Central and Eastern Europe). There is another website that provides links to U.S. historical directories. It can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/onlinedirectorysite/ Home/usa. Petition in UK To Allow Public Access to Birth, Marriage and Death Records Jan Meisels Allen, Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee, reports a petition has started to open the civil registration records (birth, marriage and death) both online and at the registration office for England and Wales. Currently, the only way to obtain a civil record is to submit a payment to the General Register Office (GRO). The person behind this campaign is Guy Etchells, the man who is behind the push to get the 1911 Census released. Etchells says by making the records immediately accessible it is a win-win as the GRO can focus on the “core task of recording and administering current registrations” and genealogical organizations may wish to digitize the records and the government would receive licensing fees. The petition is available at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/62779. Only UK citizens, ex-pat, or people actually live in the UK can sign this petition. Additional information is at http://www.gouldgenealogy.com/2014/09/download-uk-bdm- records-maybe. Warsaw Jewish Museum To Open Core Exhibit  The grand
opening of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in
Warsaw will be held October 28–30. The highlight will be the
much-anticipated opening of the museum’s Core Exhibition.
This
exhibition, which explores 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland, lies
at the heart of the museum and occupies one-third of the building.
Developed by an international team of historians, museum experts and
Jewish Studies scholars from Poland, the United States, Europe and
Israel, it presents the thousand-year history of Polish Jews, their
culture and heritage. It is a narrative exhibition. Visitors are
immersed in a story told by artifacts, paintings and interactive
installations, replicas and models, video projections and testimonies.The announcement is at http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/cms/news/4328,grand-opening- of-the-core-exhibition. Plans to Translate Vilnius Vital Records 1919–1940 The Vilnius District Research Group of Litvak SIG has plans to translate the vital records for the City of Vilnius from 1919 to 1940. Because of Privacy laws in the European Union, birth records will not be translated until 100 years have passed, but the Group plans to work immediately on marriage and death records. They have already received the first batch of records: marriage, divorce, and death records for 1919–1921.These records are on their Shutterfly website and can bed accessed by people who have contributed $100 to this project. Additional information, which includes a link to a list of the surnames and places extracted from vital records can be found at https://vilnius.shutterfly.com. Latest FindMyPast.com Discount FindMyPast.com is offering a 50% discount on their annual World subscription until Wednesday, October 15. The discount price is $99.75 compared to $199.50. The offer is located at https://www.findmypast.com/payments?vouchercode=OCTOBER50.
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