IAJGS at RootsTech Connect! 2021

315,000 (and counting) from 220 countries and territories! That's the number of registrations reported by RootsTech Connect yesterday. In its eleventh year, RootsTech has taken the conference completely virtual. The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) is  pleased to be a society sponsor of this year's exciting and groundbreaking virtual conference and has posted the following new release.[1]

 

Join IAJGS at RootsTech Connect 2021 

 

The IAJGS continues to assist in and promote the research of Jewish family history.  The Jewish genealogy community remains a strong and vibrant force, even when we are not together.  We continue to serve you with educational opportunities you can take advantage of from home.

 

Every year for the past ten years, RootsTech has held the largest family history technology conference in Salt Lake City.  This year, for the first time ever, the conference will be truly global, entirely virtual, and completely free.  RootsTech Connect kicks off February 25-27, 2021.

The main stage presentations for this virtual conference will run around the clock for the three days of the conference.  Videos of those presentations, and more than 1,000 additional presentations, will be available through RootsTech on-demand for a year.

 

IAJGS Participation

 

Visit the IAJGS virtual booth at RootsTech.  We will feature more than twenty, 5-20 minute presentations, featuring Jewish genealogy topics.  In addition, there will be five additional educational resources in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Swedish, and Polish.  Whether you are brand new to family history or an experienced genealogist, there are tips for all.

 

If you participate during the three days of the conference, there will be a Jewish Genealogist available for chat.  There you can download a Jewish Genealogy Quick Start Guide and Jewish Genealogy Research Tips.  You will also be able to explore resources from more than 90 Jewish Genealogy Societies around the world.  If you are not able to attend during the three live days of the conference, the IAJGS virtual booth resources will be accessible for up to a year.

 

For more information and to register for free, visit:  https://www.rootstech.org/

 

Learn More about IAJGS

 

The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) is an independent non-profit umbrella organization coordinating the activities and annual conference of 95 national and local Jewish Genealogical Societies (JGS) around the world.

 

Contact your local JGS for more information:  https://www.iajgs.org/membership/member-societies/

Notes:

1. I serve as a director on the board of IAJGS.

Salt Lake City, FGS and RootsTech

I haven't blogged about my plans, but now I'll tell you: I am in Salt Lake City today through Saturday. I attended RootsTech about three years ago and enjoyed it. I have never before been to a Federation of Genealogical Societies conference. I could not resist attending the joint conference when FGS and RootsTech combined their conferences for 2015. And I volunteered to be a blogging FGS ambassador.

During the last couple of months of research, whenever I found a record in an index and I knew I might acquire the record from FamilySearch Library microfilm, I noted the record, located the FSL microfilm number and stuffed the sheet of paper it into a folder. So, getting ready for my one day of FSL research was not too stressful.

I took an early morning flight to Salt Lake City, dropped my bag in my room and walked a couple of blocks to the Library. I expected a crowd, but was pleasantly surprised that I had no problem finding vacant microfilm scanners whenever I required one. Signs on the scanners warn that there is a 30 minute limit for each patron at each scanner. 

My typical strategy is to collect about three films, scan the images, load the images onto my thumb drive, put the films back in the drawers, collect about three more films and head back to the scanners. I can usually scan three images in much less than 30 minutes. So, if there had been a line, I would not have kept people waiting very long. I managed to scan about 42 images (some documents were more than one page) and another 44 as a favor for a genealogy organization.

I ate lunch in the FSL snack room and went back to work. By about 3:30 pm my eyes were crossing - up too early and too much computer screen work. I decided to call it a day.

On the way back to the hotel I passed by the Salt Palace Convention Center and stopped in to register for the conference. This year's conference bag is quite nice: essentially a small bicycling bag. It even has a pocket for an iPod or smart phone and a hole for earphones.

With this puppy I should be ready for all conference contingencies.

This evening I used the RootsTech app to work on my schedule and develop my conference calendar. At this stage, if I am interested in more than one presentation for a time period, I put them on the calendar, anyway. I usually make the final decision on which one to attend on the fly. I have placed the app on my phone and my iPad. If past experience is a guide, I will likely use it consult my calendar most often during the conference on my iPad. 

Some presentations provide handouts that may be  downloaded via the RootsTech app. One may use them within the App and even, apparently take notes on them (I'll have to try that). One may also download them into other apps on one's mobile device or send them via email. I have placed several into my GoodReader app on my iPad. 

Since I may attend lectures at both conferences, it is sometimes overwhelming trying to decide which presentations to attend. Thursday at 11 am, for example, there are more than 20 talks from which to choose.

I have also been blocking out some time to help out at the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies booth during the conference. I do have some free time, but I am having trouble finding two-hour blocks ( I definitely do not want to miss either a Thomas W. Jones or Judy Russell presentation (!)).

Tomorrow, I will be attending FGS presentations. I will start with the 8 am General Session: "Focus on Societies - Successfully Embracing the Future." After that will attend some sessions on effective genealogical society management.

I will try to catch Judy Russell's talk, "The Ethical Genealogist," and then round out the day with additional sessions geared toward improving society offerings.

I have been contacted by a Labun, Ukraine researcher (Labun is my father's family's community in today's Ukraine) whose relative from the community was not Jewish. I am hoping to get to meet her this week. She's doing some interesting research.

LeafSeek: Share the forest . . . as well as the trees

Brooke Schreier Ganz likes to share.  And we should all be happy she does. On Friday, 3 February 2012, her LeafSeek application was awarded second place in the Developer Challenge at RootsTech 2012. LeafSeek is the engine underlying the new Gesher Galicia search page. On Saturday in Salt Lake City, Utah, I listened to Brooke’s RootsTech presentation and then sat down with her for further conversation. 

Brooke Schreier Ganz at RootsTech

Brooke’s web development pedigree is impressive: she has worked at IBM, Disney Consumer Products division, and Bravo cable television. She now works part time from home so she can spend time with and care for her two little “start-ups.”

True to her nature, it was a database and its useful search engine (Jewish Roots Indexing-Poland) that first got Brooke interested in tracing her family history. Her family hails mostly from the Ukrainian portion of Galicia, as well as Poland and Moldova. Her husband’s family, which she is also tracing, has Polish, Romanian (Hungarian) and Sephardic (from the Isle of Rhodes) roots.

Gesher Galicia has been acquiring a variety of data sets including vital records, tax lists, landsmanshaften lists, industrial permit lists, and school and government yearbooks and wanted to put these 192,268 (and counting) records online in one database for Jewish genealogists’ use. Enter Brooke. While awake late at night with her baby, she’d sometimes use her iPhone to research the problem. Later, after much needed sleep, she’d work on the coding. In designing LeafSeek, Brooke sought to address the complexity of developing an effective search for multiple data sets with diversities of language, political boundaries and subdivisions, types of information, spelling, etc. all in one database. These are the issues with which all genealogists studying families from Eastern Europe have to contend. The Gesher Galicia database is proving to be fertile ground for beta testing the tool.

If you had Jewish relatives from Galicia, try a search.  One of the most valuable features on the Search Gesher Galicia website in the unlimited wildcard search in both the given name and surname fields.  There are no minimums for the number of letters required or maximums for the number of asterisks.  In your results, click on the + to expand the information in the record.  If information is provided on the current town name, click on that to see a map of its location.

Before heading to Salt Lake City I’d searched the Gesher Galicia database by entering one of my Galitzianer surnames (Liebross) in the search box and received one result. Mene Liebross of Okopy died in 1873.  The information in the result included the Family History Library (FHL) microfilm number.  How slick it that!?! I located the record on Wednesday at the FHL.

Facets on the left side of the results page allow easy sorting through results.  They include information on types and number of records, top surnames and given names, locations, years, etc. In the future expect to see the addition of hierarchical facets so that in addition to town names, one may also select parameters such as country, province, or district. 

Second Place Award for LeafSeek

Some time soon, Brooke plans to add the Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching (BMPM) system for names. She is also quite taken by the example set by Steve Morse’s One-Step website: “Steve Morse is incredible and inspiring not only for his work but also because he made his work open source – for everyone’s benefit.” Open source means that LeafSeek’s code is available free for anyone’s use.  Brooke visualizes LeafSeek as “a genealogy search engine in a box,” available to those who have need of its features.  She has plans for further features and improvements and hopes that others will use it and add to it. In fact, if you notice things that need correction or have suggestions for additional features, contact Brooke via the "contact us" button at the bottom of the Gesher Galicia webpage. She's always happy to make improvements.

I believe that LeafSeek will provide the opportunity to put databases such as JRI-Poland on steroids.  Imagine the JRI-Poland database with enhanced pattern recognition to better understand the connections among records and the people in them. Right now to do that, one would have to design and laboriously populate a spreadsheet with all the data elements found in one's JRI-Poland results. Only then, could one manipulate the data to see the patterns. LeafSeek has the potential to do much of that for us. 

So, congratulations to Brooke and thanks for sharing.

It's snowing in Mecca

I overcame the usual stress of getting ready for a trip: doing the basics to get things tucked away at work, anticipating clothing needs in a foreign climate (all places where there is actually winter weather are foreign), and packing (I acknowledged to myself and to my husband my embarrassment at being a technology dinosaur – why, I don’t even have an iPad or a smart phone! The closest I come is my iPod Touch. I still have favorite pens and pencils – maybe I shouldn’t go to RootsTech…) And then, I put the finishing touches on my plans for searching at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.  There is never enough time to prepare, but finally, at about 9 P.M. the night before my flight, I sang que sera, sera and resisted the urge to stay up till the wee hours searching through online indices for previously unsecured remnants of great great uncle whatshisname.

On Wednesday, I arrived about 11 A.M., shuttled to the hotel and when they told me it was too early to check in, I knew just what to do: out the back door, down the alley and around the corner to the Family History Library (FHL).  As I’ve come to expect of any LDS-sponsored genealogical venture, the FHL is fantastically organized and was ready for the onslaught of more than 4200 eager (read rabid) RootsTech genealogists. The place seems filled with books about and microfilm from every corner of the earth.  For many, including me, this was our first foray in the FHL – although I now know that my time spent in the Mesa Regional Family History Center was good preparation for this place, albeit on a smaller scale.

It’s a thrill to be able to locate an appropriate microfilm number and immediately get ones hands on the film.  Truth be told, for Jewish genealogy the FHL is a mixed bag.  They do have some things from Galicia in the areas where my mother’s mother’s family was located.  I found the one Liebross record from Okopy I’d identified in Gesher Galicia's All Galicia Database.  I do not yet know if or how this Mene might be related to my Liebross family, but it’s nice to acquire a record without having to wait months for the Polish Archives to locate and send it.  Beyond that, for me at least, the relevant Eastern European records are scant.  But that is not because the FHL hasn’t tried.  A couple of years ago at the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) conference in Los Angeles, CA I heard Kahlile Mehr, the Manager of the Slavic Collection Management & Cataloging Dept at the FHL, say that he’d been trying for more than ten years to get an agreement with the Zhytomyr archives in Ukraine.  Ach!  He also didn’t have access to Khmelnytskyy or Zalishchyky archives in Ukraine (triple ach!) – all places I need.

Anyway, the FHL is great for New York City records.  And I decided to do a vacuum-like search (look at everything in sight) for one of my hiding relatives: Moses/Morris Epstein (my great grandmother Hoda Wilson Epstein’s brother). Before I left home I queried Italian Genealogical Group Vital Records index of NYC death records for all Moses and Morris Epsteins and, list in hand, used Steve Morse’s One-Step tool for finding FHL film numbers for NYC vital records (why hadn’t I found that before).  After one day of maniacal searching at the FHL, I’ve gone through about ¾ of my list of likely films.  Haven’t found him yet.

Thursday I was busy with the conference.  I’ll get back to my research Friday night when the FHL stays open for RootsTech until midnight.  Then I'll probably get into their considerable collection of books.  For now, out through the snow and across the street to the Convention Center.