Tag Archives: world archives project

Figuring out the Polish State Archive changes

Research, Technical, ,

After my earlier post Changes at the Polish State Archives about the closing of several important record databases at the Polish State Archives, it was pointed out that the database I directed people to use instead, szukajwarchiwach.pl, is also going to be shut down.

szukajwarchiwach.pl on left and szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl on right

It has been announced that that site will be replaced by szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl. The date for that transition has not been announced yet, but hopefully they will not do so before you can do everyone on the new site that you can do on the old site. I’m going to discuss two issues I have with the new site, one very significant, and one perhaps less so, but that still bothers me quite a bit.

You can’t get the same search results

As it currently stands, the new site cannot do the same kinds of searches as the old site. I pointed people to szukajwarchiwach.pl because I was able to show the exact same results from searches on both PRADZIAD and szukajwarchiwach.pl, even if the results were in a different order and format. It does not seem possible to do the same kind of searches on szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl.

For example, in my earlier article, I wrote about searching for all Jewish civil registers (birth, marriage, divorce, death, etc.). Both PRADZIAD and szukajwarchiwach.pl returned 3303 results:

3303 results from both PRADZIAD (left) and szukajwarchiwach.pl (right)
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Mac indexing software for World Archives Project

Software, Technical, ,

I wrote previously about the World Memory Project (WMP), a collaboration between the USHMM and Ancestry.com to index USHMM-held records using Ancestry.com’s indexing software from their more general World Archives Project (WAP). In fact, if you look at the World Archives Project site, you’ll see all the World Memory Project projects now are listed as part of their large World Archives Project list.

One of my earliest blog posts (just over two years ago) was on the topic of Giving Back Through Indexing, and suggesting volunteering for online indexing efforts as a way of giving back to the genealogy community. At the time FamilySearch’s was the largest effort (and probably still is) and Ancestry.com had yet to launch WAP.

The World Archive Project also lists as partners many genealogy societies, including (among Jewish groups) JewishGen, JGS of Los Angeles, and JGS of Southern Nevada.

Ancestry.com makes all databases indexed through the WAP available for free through their site, although access to images is not free, and sometimes not available at all on Ancestry.com. In some cases, like with USHMM records, the images may only be viewed at the host organization itself.

One of the criticisms I had of the Ancestry.com’s WMP and WAP projects when I wrote my earlier article was that they didn’t have Mac indexing software. As a Mac user I was especially disappointed in not being able to participate in these projects.

Apparently, back in October Ancestry.com launched the Mac version of their indexing software (they call it the Keying Tool). I hadn’t noticed that until now, so I downloaded the software and gave it a spin. Like the similar software for FamilySearch indexing, the user interface is a bit clunky. My biggest problem