Nu? What's New? Vol. 21 No. 11

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

The lack of news this week, no doubt, was caused by the current worldwide coronavirus crisis. I hope Nu? What’s New? readers survive this crisis with no health problems and a minimum of inconvenience.

Genealogy Events Not Immune to the Pandemic

In general, any gathering of the public is being cancelled and this includes genealogy-related events.

Genealogical societies. All Jewish genealogical societies with which I am associated have cancelled their meetings. The Israel Genealogical Research Association has an important election meeting. They have stated, “Due to the current health situation, the meeting will be held virtually.”

Family History Library closed. David E. Rencher, Director of the Family History Library, announced, “Out of concern for the health and safety of our guests, volunteers, and staff, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City will close until further notice.” Regional FamilySearch centers and libraries have been asked to consider the direction of their local and government leaders, and then make informed decisions about temporary closures.

RootsTech London Cancelled for 2020. The RootsTech conference planned for London from November 5–7 will be postponed until the fall of 2021. Those who have already registered for the event will be issued refunds.

(U.S.) National Genealogical Society’s annual conference is planned for May 20–23. As of this writing, it is still planned. One of the considerations in cancelling a conference is whether such an act would constitute breach of contract between the organization and the venue. Most contracts have a “force majeure” clause which allows a party to terminate an agreement for circumstances beyond their control.

Arolsen Archives business as usual—almost. Arolsen Archives will continue to operate in as normal a manner as possible. All the members of the Arolsen Archives team who have the appropriate equipment are currently working from home. Telephone and email availability are not restricted in any way. The one exception to their normal procedure is they will not accept on-site visitors.

MyHeritage Adds 815M Records in February

No, it is not a typographical error. 815M records were added to MyHeritage in the month of February: 545M records from U.S. city directories, 250M of inventors of historical patents, 6.9M from Canadian newspapers from 1752–2007, 4.7M of famous people throughout history, 3.4M from the Minnesota Birth Index 1900–1934, and 4.5M from the Minnesota Death Index 1904–2001. This update brings the total number of historical records in MyHeritage SuperSearch to 11.9 billion.

The compete, extensive, list can be found at https://tinyurl.com/MHFeb2020.

FamilySearch Adds More Than 20M Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, more than 20M index records and images, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch030920. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They include records from American Samoa, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, England, Ireland, Jamaica, Peru, Puerto Rico, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sweden and United States.

The unusually high record count is due to the addition of both an index and images of U.S. World War II draft registration records. Also an index to more than 1M burials in Sweden is included.

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

Ancestry has added/updated the following record groups at their site. The list with links to individual collections can be found at https://www.ancestry.com/cs/recent-collections.

The only record group not related to church records is an update to Quebec, Canada, Notarial Records, 1637–1935.

A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Italy, France and “Portuguese” Communities

Avotaynu has just published Dr. Beider’s second book on surnames of the Mediterranean region: A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Italy, France and “Portuguese” Communities. His first book of the Mediterranean region is A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Maghreb, Malta and Gibraltar, published by Avotaynu in 2017.

Why “Mediterranean region” rather than “Sephardic.” Because Dr. Beider has the preciseness of a person who got his first doctorate in Applied Mathematics. He notes that the surnames of the region include names based on Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, Berber, Hebrew, Aramaic, Spanish, Judeo-Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French. There are also Ashkenazic surnames in the region.

The book is 882 pages, hardcover. Cost is $89.00 plus shipping. Addtional informaton, including the Table of Contents and sample entry, can be found at http://www.avotaynu.com/books/Italy.html.