Nu? What's New? Vol. 20 No. 34

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

Nu? What’s New? is being published one day late. This past weekend I spent celebrating the bar mitzvah of one of my grandsons.

Phyllis Kramer z"l

The JewishGen community was shocked with the announcement that Phyllis Kramer, its Director of Education, has died. JewishGen’s Executive Director Avraham Groll referred her as “an extremely loyal friend, mentor and role model to me.” Groll stated that “Phyllis was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive illness shortly before the Cleveland conference.” Yet she attended the conference—which occurred only 70 days ago—and, in fact, gave two lectures. Such was Phyllis’s spirit.

Her activities in JewishGen went well beyond her role as Director of Education. I recall that she once invited a number of people to her home for a “cocktail hour” as a JewishGen fund raising event. She participated in many meetings where the future of JewishGen was discussed. When I discovered some years ago that Phyllis’s title was Director of Education, I was initially puzzled. My thoughts were “but Phyllis does so much more for JewishGen.”

May her memory be a blessing.

Where to Find Printable Forms on trhe Internet

In family history research, this is the era of placing everything online or on your computer. Yet there still may be a need for retaining information on paper. Family History Daily has published an article titled “10 Places to Find the Free Genealogy Printables You Need.” Family History Daily notes that “Whether you need a way to keep track of your census research, create a family tree to place in a family binder or scrapbook, or are putting together a biography of an individual ancestor – family history printables can help you take your research to a new level.”

The article can be found at https://tinyurl.com/PrintableGenealogyForms. One of the sites that seems to have a comprehensive set of forms you can print is https://www.familytreetemplates.net/category/forms.

Mark Your Calendar:
2020 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy
The IAJGs 40th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will be held in San Diego, California, from August 9–14 at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina. As details of the conference become available, they will be posted to http://iajgs2020.org/.

U.S. National Archives Adding OCR to Its Search Capability

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has announced they are adding Optical Character Recognition to the digitization process of its catalog. In addition to digitizing records, these records are being scanned to pick up the words in the document which will allow researchers to search for documents whose text contains the material being searched..

Currently, the catalog’s new OCR engine is applied to records in either JPG or PDF format added to the Catalog since June 2019. NARA is exploring how to retroactively process records from before that date.

The announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/NARAOCR.

Family Tree Magazine Announces 2019 List of Best Genealogy Sites
Family Tree Magazine has published their 2019 list of best genealogy websites. JewishGen, Reclaim The Records and the Stephen P. Morse site are among them. Browse the list of sites to determine if any are of interest to you. They can be found at https://www.familytreemagazine.com/best-genealogy-websites/.

Discovering Budapest’s Lesser Known Synagogues – Part 2

Jewish Heritage Europe has continued its series on “Budapest’s Lesser Known Synagogues” focusing on those buildings that are hidden from view—sanctuaries located within building courtyards and apartments. The first article identified those buildings that are no longer used as synagogues. The second in a series of three articles can be found at https://tinyurl.com/JHEBudapestSynagoguesPart2.

FamilySearch Will Be 125 Years Old This November

On November 13, 1894, the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) was founded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with the goals of “collecting, establishing and maintaining a genealogical library for the use and benefit of its members and others” and “disseminating information regarding genealogical matters.” Today that organization is called FamilySearch. Since its beginnings in 1894, FamilySearch has worked to publish more than 2 billion online historical records, grow its family tree of more than 1.2 billion names, and provide help in its over 4,700 family history centers worldwide.

In order to celebrate the 125th anniversary, FamilySearch would like its users to send them family history experiences. Send them a photo, video, or experience relating to your favorite ancestors or family history stories.

The announcement can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/ genealogical-society-of-utah/.

FamilySearch Additions This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, nearly 4M indexed records can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch090419. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. Most of the records—more than 3M—are for an index to Native American Census Rolls. Also included are records from Colombia, Croatia, El Salvador, Hungary, Mexico, Switzerland and the United States, including Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah.

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.

New Collections at Ancestry.com

In addition to Church records, the only collection Ancestry added this week is Pembrokeshire, Wales, Electoral Registers, 1740–1978.

Getting Started in Jewish Genealogy: 2018 Edition

More a getting started guide than a beginner’s guide, it is meant to convince the reader that tracing one’s Jewish ancestry can be done. The resources described are primarily Internet resources. The Internet has revolutionized family history research. What used to take days or weeks now takes minutes or hours because of the wealth of resources on the Internet. It describes in detail such resources as JewishGen, Morse One-Step site, FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, MyHeritage and many more sites. It alerts the readers to what types of documents of their ancestors will aid in their research—such records as birth, marriage, death, Immigration, census and naturalization records.

Cost is only $16.50 plus shippng. Addtional informaton, including the Table of Contents, can be found at http://www.avotaynu.com/books/GettingStarted.htm.