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Catchup - IAJGS 2022
Sep. 6th, 2022 04:53 pmAugust 21st through 25th was the annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). It had been planned for Philadelphia but ended up being virtual. I understand the concerns given the demographics, i.e. genealogists skew older than the general population, but that was still disappointing. They had a few different options for how much of the conference you wanted to pay for and I decided that I might as well swing for the whole thing since presentations are available for 60 days after it ends. (The other options were for 20 or 50 presentations. I’ve seen more than 20 already.)
Sunday: Sunday started with a keynote by Zev Eleff about “Marking Time: Genealogy and History as a Religious Experience.” His key point was that genealogy is more than just a detective game and can include a spiritual journey into who our family was and where they came from. He also talked about building community.
That was followed by a presentation on “The Emerging New Era of Jewish Genealogy” by Marlis Humphrey, Sallyann Sack, and Stanley Diamond. Among the things they talked about were increased availability of records, use of AI, genetic genealogy (especially Y-DNA testing), and new catalog technology. Improvements in AI for handwriting recognition sounds particularly promising.
I’m fairly knowledgeable abut Litvak research, but I still learned a few things from the talk on “Making the Most of Your Litvak Research With LitvakSig and More” presented by Judy Baston. There were a couple of search tricks that were new to me, for example. And there was good info on finding historical maps.
The last presentation I went to on Sunday was “Gangs of New York: How Reclaim the Records Fought and Won New York City Death Records Access” by Brooke Ganz, Alec Ferreti, Alex Calzareth, and Michael Moritz. New York City, unlike the rest of New York State, keeps certain archival records with the Department of Health, instead of the Archives, with birth records restricted for 125 years and death records for 75 years. They even create obstacles for people (descendants) who are supposed to have the right to obtain records. In short, Reclaim the Records filed a lawsuit and in January 2022 a court ruling said that the Department of Health had no basis for this extension on embargoing records. The really interesting part is that they found lots of evidence of financial conflicts of interest as the reason for some of what the Department of Health has done. This was an excellent talk and made me appreciate Reclaim the Records even more than I already did.
Monday: The first presentation I went to on Monday was from the South Africa Special Interest Group (SIG), presented by Roy Ogus. I learned about a few resources I haven’t really explored yet (e.g. indexed newspaper clippings and surname listings in archives of the JewshGen South Africa newsletter.) In short, there is always more to do.
Then I went to a presentation on “The Psychology of Searching” by Penny Walters. This touched on a number of questions about why people do genealogy. One interesting thing she talked about was the increase in interest in genealogy in recent years, partly due to increased a access to records on the internet, as well as extensive advertising of DNA testing and TV programs about genealogy. She touched on a number of other questions, e.g. finding “bad” ancestors, who we include in our research, and adoptees dealing with both birth families and adoptive families. Her basic conclusion was that researching ancestors may have more to do with constructing ourselves than our ancestors. This was a really interesting talk, though I am not sure how useful it is for my own research. (I should also note that, in my case, it’s the “bad” relatives who often interest me the most, e.g. the ones with criminal records. I’m not sure I want to know what that says about me.)
After that was the JewishGen Annual Meeting, presented by Avraham Groll. There were discussions of new partnerships, various projects, and reports from various Research Divisions. The most interesting thing was a new service to remind people about Yahrzeits (anniversaries of deaths of relatives), which will go live imminently.
The final presentation I went to on Monday was for the Belarus SIG. There were mentions of various resources, with a particular emphasis on the Routes to Roots Foundation. There’s also a surname project that looks potentially useful. But I suspect Belarus will continue to be more frustrating to research than the other countries I have roots in.
Tuesday: I was a little more energetic on Tuesday and managed to watch 6 presentations. I started with “Preserving and Sharing Your Family Memories Using Easy to Use Hardware, Software, and Networks” by Eli Rabinowitz. I have vague intentions of revamping my web presence (only partially related to genealogy) and he had a few useful ideas. But I think I really need to sort out what I actually want to do first.
Then I went to a presentation on “Connecting With Family Through Virtual Family History Activities” by Shenley Puterbaugh. She talked about a number of ways to do virtual tours and play various games to get family interested in their history. I think this would be more useful for getting children involved, so it wasn’t particularly relevant to my situation. But a lot of her ideas would be useful for other people.
Arlene Beare and Rita Bogdnova presented “JewishGen Latvia.” Rita is an archivist in Latvia and discussed the new website for Jews of Latvia: Names and Fates 1941-1945. This is mostly based on information from the 1935 census and has a lot of potential. Of course, I’m not sure if any of my relatives were still in Latvia since I know my more immediate family were mostly in Vilnius (which was Wilno, Poland) or Kaunas, Lithuania by then. But there may be info on some branches I haven’t done a lot of work on. I also learned that there are plans for a Latvia SIG meeting in late September / early October to announce new data. I definitely need to keep any eye out for that.
Next up was “Visualizing Our Ancestors Lives with JRI-Poland” presented by Stanley Diamond and Robinn Maggid. There was a lot of information about the new website. There was also talk about new projects and (or course) money needed for those.
I found Barbara Krassner’s presentation on “Writing Family History: Putting Life Into Dead Characters” somewhat disappointing. For one thing, lengthy writing exercises don’t work well in a brief (one hour) on-line format. But my bigger issue was that I have a lot of experience with telling family stories and I was looking for something deeper than prompts to trigger stories. I think this would be more useful to people who are novices.
Finally, was the always fun “Genealogy Death Match” in which two people (in this case, David Ellis and Steven Jaron) compete to see who can do a better job of documenting their ancestors back several generations. Steven won, essentially because having Dutch ancestry provides access to older historical records than those available from Poland. He also had the advantage of being younger, allowing him to show, for example, DNA information from his parents.
Wednesday: The first presentation I wet to on Wednesday was for the Kupiskis / Rokiskis SIG/BooF. There were a few news items (e.g. re: dedication of an information sign) and some information about records. But the primary value of this was reminding me of a branch of my family that lived in Rokiskis (siblings of my third great-grandfather, if I’ve counted correctly, and their descendants) who I haven’t done much research on. There was also an interesting report by Phil Shapiro (who lives in Vilnius part of the year) about feelings in Lithuania regarding the Ukraine War.
Christa Cowan gave a very good talk on “1950 Census Discovery.” In short, Ancestry has the entire census, indexed using Artificial Intelligence to do handwriting recognition, available. She suggested starting a search by filling in as little as possible. She also talked about the notes that census takers added, which sound like they could be interesting. More stuff for my to-do list!
The “IAJGS 2022 Annual Meeting” started with various award presentations. That was followed by the business meeting, which included a financial report, reports on a few projects, and committee reports. Of course, what everyone was waiting for was information about next year’s conference. It’s going to be in person (G-d willing) in London on 30 July through 3 August.
Next up was the “JGS - US Research Division” meeting, led by Ellen Kowitt. The most interesting part of that was a discussion about the Shul Records America project. This seems to be more a directory of where records are, rather than direct access to records, so I am not sure how much time I want to spend with it.
Jane Neff Rollins gave an interesting talk on “Spinning a Nuanced Story From a Single Family Photo.” In her case, she knew who most of the people in the picture were and was just trying to identify an older couple at one side. She talked about a number of clues to identify where photos were taken and what the context of them are. She particularly suggested using magnification to see details. She also noted the importance of seeing who isn’t there. That’s an interesting point since, for example, I have a photograph of three of my grandmother’s siblings and a cousin, but my grandmother herself is not in the picture.
The final presentation I went to on Wednesday was for the FaceBook group Tracing the Tribe. This is the best of the more general Jewish genealogy FaceBook groups and it was good to hear what the moderators of it had to say.
Thursday: Thursday was the last day of the live conference. I started it with the “Warsaw District Research Group” presentation by Hadassah Lipsius. It isn’t clear that any of my relatives lived in Warsaw itself, but it seems possible. At any rate, I learned a couple of things. Namely: 1) Records in Warsaw are by district. The biggest Jewish populations were in Districts 3 and 4.
And 2) There are Yiddish newspapers available with death announcements. There was also discussion of a database of Jewish burials in Poland, but it wasn’t clear if that was for the entire country.
After that, I moved on to the “Vilnius District Research Division” presentation by David Ellis. I can’t say that I learned much that was new, but he had some good tips on searching and filtering within the Excel spreadsheets from LitvakSig.
I took some time away from the conference for other commitments. I got back to conference watching with the “SIG - JewishGen BialyGen” meeting, led by Mark Hapern. This was very useful because I learned that JRI-Poland has a lot more records for Tykocin now, which is where my maternal grandfather was from. In particular, it looks like there should be vital records for relevant years coming on line. All I need is to find time to look at them!
The final live presentation I went to was “Mishpacha Melee,” which is the annual IAJGS conference version of Family Feud. This was silly and fun, rather than strictly educational, so made for a good end to the festivities.
Closing Notes: I had signed up to be a mentor, but the only person who made an appointment with me ended up cancelling it.
I found most of the sessions I went to quite good. (The one exception was noted above.) I ended up with a very long to-do list, of course. Part of that to-do list is watching about another 70 or so presentations! At any rate, I am looking forward to spending more time on productive research. And I am very much looking forward to an in-person conference in London next year.
Sunday: Sunday started with a keynote by Zev Eleff about “Marking Time: Genealogy and History as a Religious Experience.” His key point was that genealogy is more than just a detective game and can include a spiritual journey into who our family was and where they came from. He also talked about building community.
That was followed by a presentation on “The Emerging New Era of Jewish Genealogy” by Marlis Humphrey, Sallyann Sack, and Stanley Diamond. Among the things they talked about were increased availability of records, use of AI, genetic genealogy (especially Y-DNA testing), and new catalog technology. Improvements in AI for handwriting recognition sounds particularly promising.
I’m fairly knowledgeable abut Litvak research, but I still learned a few things from the talk on “Making the Most of Your Litvak Research With LitvakSig and More” presented by Judy Baston. There were a couple of search tricks that were new to me, for example. And there was good info on finding historical maps.
The last presentation I went to on Sunday was “Gangs of New York: How Reclaim the Records Fought and Won New York City Death Records Access” by Brooke Ganz, Alec Ferreti, Alex Calzareth, and Michael Moritz. New York City, unlike the rest of New York State, keeps certain archival records with the Department of Health, instead of the Archives, with birth records restricted for 125 years and death records for 75 years. They even create obstacles for people (descendants) who are supposed to have the right to obtain records. In short, Reclaim the Records filed a lawsuit and in January 2022 a court ruling said that the Department of Health had no basis for this extension on embargoing records. The really interesting part is that they found lots of evidence of financial conflicts of interest as the reason for some of what the Department of Health has done. This was an excellent talk and made me appreciate Reclaim the Records even more than I already did.
Monday: The first presentation I went to on Monday was from the South Africa Special Interest Group (SIG), presented by Roy Ogus. I learned about a few resources I haven’t really explored yet (e.g. indexed newspaper clippings and surname listings in archives of the JewshGen South Africa newsletter.) In short, there is always more to do.
Then I went to a presentation on “The Psychology of Searching” by Penny Walters. This touched on a number of questions about why people do genealogy. One interesting thing she talked about was the increase in interest in genealogy in recent years, partly due to increased a access to records on the internet, as well as extensive advertising of DNA testing and TV programs about genealogy. She touched on a number of other questions, e.g. finding “bad” ancestors, who we include in our research, and adoptees dealing with both birth families and adoptive families. Her basic conclusion was that researching ancestors may have more to do with constructing ourselves than our ancestors. This was a really interesting talk, though I am not sure how useful it is for my own research. (I should also note that, in my case, it’s the “bad” relatives who often interest me the most, e.g. the ones with criminal records. I’m not sure I want to know what that says about me.)
After that was the JewishGen Annual Meeting, presented by Avraham Groll. There were discussions of new partnerships, various projects, and reports from various Research Divisions. The most interesting thing was a new service to remind people about Yahrzeits (anniversaries of deaths of relatives), which will go live imminently.
The final presentation I went to on Monday was for the Belarus SIG. There were mentions of various resources, with a particular emphasis on the Routes to Roots Foundation. There’s also a surname project that looks potentially useful. But I suspect Belarus will continue to be more frustrating to research than the other countries I have roots in.
Tuesday: I was a little more energetic on Tuesday and managed to watch 6 presentations. I started with “Preserving and Sharing Your Family Memories Using Easy to Use Hardware, Software, and Networks” by Eli Rabinowitz. I have vague intentions of revamping my web presence (only partially related to genealogy) and he had a few useful ideas. But I think I really need to sort out what I actually want to do first.
Then I went to a presentation on “Connecting With Family Through Virtual Family History Activities” by Shenley Puterbaugh. She talked about a number of ways to do virtual tours and play various games to get family interested in their history. I think this would be more useful for getting children involved, so it wasn’t particularly relevant to my situation. But a lot of her ideas would be useful for other people.
Arlene Beare and Rita Bogdnova presented “JewishGen Latvia.” Rita is an archivist in Latvia and discussed the new website for Jews of Latvia: Names and Fates 1941-1945. This is mostly based on information from the 1935 census and has a lot of potential. Of course, I’m not sure if any of my relatives were still in Latvia since I know my more immediate family were mostly in Vilnius (which was Wilno, Poland) or Kaunas, Lithuania by then. But there may be info on some branches I haven’t done a lot of work on. I also learned that there are plans for a Latvia SIG meeting in late September / early October to announce new data. I definitely need to keep any eye out for that.
Next up was “Visualizing Our Ancestors Lives with JRI-Poland” presented by Stanley Diamond and Robinn Maggid. There was a lot of information about the new website. There was also talk about new projects and (or course) money needed for those.
I found Barbara Krassner’s presentation on “Writing Family History: Putting Life Into Dead Characters” somewhat disappointing. For one thing, lengthy writing exercises don’t work well in a brief (one hour) on-line format. But my bigger issue was that I have a lot of experience with telling family stories and I was looking for something deeper than prompts to trigger stories. I think this would be more useful to people who are novices.
Finally, was the always fun “Genealogy Death Match” in which two people (in this case, David Ellis and Steven Jaron) compete to see who can do a better job of documenting their ancestors back several generations. Steven won, essentially because having Dutch ancestry provides access to older historical records than those available from Poland. He also had the advantage of being younger, allowing him to show, for example, DNA information from his parents.
Wednesday: The first presentation I wet to on Wednesday was for the Kupiskis / Rokiskis SIG/BooF. There were a few news items (e.g. re: dedication of an information sign) and some information about records. But the primary value of this was reminding me of a branch of my family that lived in Rokiskis (siblings of my third great-grandfather, if I’ve counted correctly, and their descendants) who I haven’t done much research on. There was also an interesting report by Phil Shapiro (who lives in Vilnius part of the year) about feelings in Lithuania regarding the Ukraine War.
Christa Cowan gave a very good talk on “1950 Census Discovery.” In short, Ancestry has the entire census, indexed using Artificial Intelligence to do handwriting recognition, available. She suggested starting a search by filling in as little as possible. She also talked about the notes that census takers added, which sound like they could be interesting. More stuff for my to-do list!
The “IAJGS 2022 Annual Meeting” started with various award presentations. That was followed by the business meeting, which included a financial report, reports on a few projects, and committee reports. Of course, what everyone was waiting for was information about next year’s conference. It’s going to be in person (G-d willing) in London on 30 July through 3 August.
Next up was the “JGS - US Research Division” meeting, led by Ellen Kowitt. The most interesting part of that was a discussion about the Shul Records America project. This seems to be more a directory of where records are, rather than direct access to records, so I am not sure how much time I want to spend with it.
Jane Neff Rollins gave an interesting talk on “Spinning a Nuanced Story From a Single Family Photo.” In her case, she knew who most of the people in the picture were and was just trying to identify an older couple at one side. She talked about a number of clues to identify where photos were taken and what the context of them are. She particularly suggested using magnification to see details. She also noted the importance of seeing who isn’t there. That’s an interesting point since, for example, I have a photograph of three of my grandmother’s siblings and a cousin, but my grandmother herself is not in the picture.
The final presentation I went to on Wednesday was for the FaceBook group Tracing the Tribe. This is the best of the more general Jewish genealogy FaceBook groups and it was good to hear what the moderators of it had to say.
Thursday: Thursday was the last day of the live conference. I started it with the “Warsaw District Research Group” presentation by Hadassah Lipsius. It isn’t clear that any of my relatives lived in Warsaw itself, but it seems possible. At any rate, I learned a couple of things. Namely: 1) Records in Warsaw are by district. The biggest Jewish populations were in Districts 3 and 4.
And 2) There are Yiddish newspapers available with death announcements. There was also discussion of a database of Jewish burials in Poland, but it wasn’t clear if that was for the entire country.
After that, I moved on to the “Vilnius District Research Division” presentation by David Ellis. I can’t say that I learned much that was new, but he had some good tips on searching and filtering within the Excel spreadsheets from LitvakSig.
I took some time away from the conference for other commitments. I got back to conference watching with the “SIG - JewishGen BialyGen” meeting, led by Mark Hapern. This was very useful because I learned that JRI-Poland has a lot more records for Tykocin now, which is where my maternal grandfather was from. In particular, it looks like there should be vital records for relevant years coming on line. All I need is to find time to look at them!
The final live presentation I went to was “Mishpacha Melee,” which is the annual IAJGS conference version of Family Feud. This was silly and fun, rather than strictly educational, so made for a good end to the festivities.
Closing Notes: I had signed up to be a mentor, but the only person who made an appointment with me ended up cancelling it.
I found most of the sessions I went to quite good. (The one exception was noted above.) I ended up with a very long to-do list, of course. Part of that to-do list is watching about another 70 or so presentations! At any rate, I am looking forward to spending more time on productive research. And I am very much looking forward to an in-person conference in London next year.
