Project Status Report I
East European Microfilming in
BELARUS, BULGARIA, CROATIA,
HUNGARY, RUSSIA, SLOVAKIA
and the UKRAINE
© copyright 1994 and 1995 by John D. Movius; all rights reserved
Reported by John D. Movius
Author's Preface: This is the first of two reports based on an intereview
in July 1994 with Thomas Edlund, one of the librarian catalogers at the Family History
Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. This was published in the FEEFHS Newsletter Volume 2
Number 3 in the fall of 1994.
Part II of this Project Status Report, covering the balance of the Eastern European countires
(including Germany, Poland, Bulgaria and Armenia) is
now available.
Persons interested in obtaining the latest filming project status are reminded that the full text
of Thomas Edlund's speech on this subject (given at the FEEFHS Cleveland Conference in
August 1995) is printed in the FEEFHS Newsletter Volume 3 Number
3 (for more information, see FEEFHS
Publications
At the first FEEFHS annual conference at Salt Lake City in May 1994, Family History
Library (FHL) associate librarian and cataloger Thomas Edlund provided a well prepared
summary outline and lecture on Slovenian and Croatian archival sources now available on
microfilm thru the FHL in Salt Lake City and its 2000 Family History Centers worldwide.
Tom is well placed to offer these insights, having cataloging and indexing responsibilities
for a large number of East European extraction (filming) projects of the Genealogical Society
of Utah at the FHL.
Hoping to learn more of specific interest to many of our various FEEFHS member societies,
an interview with Tom was obtained at his FHL office on 22 July 1994. My interview notes
reflect the following status of various projects:
SLOVAKIA -- Five major archives exist in Slovakia. Top priority is given to
extraction of parish
records. Camera crews working here have shipped over 700 reels of film since starting here
in 1993.
Presently Slovakian church books are being filmed by three camera crews -- one each at the
archives of Ko ice,
Presov and Levoca.
CROATIA -- Nine filming projects have been undertaken in Croatia, four of
which are still active,
as follows:
- Zagreb: Filming of parish records at the State Archive here is complete.
This
includes Roman
Catholic parish records starting circa the 1750's to 1820's and then continuing until World
War I. Typical
record group spans are from 1820 to 1915.
- Blaski Diocese: The Greek Orthodox records here are completely
filmed.
- Osijek: This archive near the Serbian border took hits from artillery
shells
during a recent
conflict. It burned and most or all records were destroyed. Fortunately all vital records
there had been
microfilmed before this terrible destruction.
This accomplishment stands as a shining example of the paramount importance of the many
microfilm projects
of the Genealogical Society of Utah. These Osijek records consist of Bishop's transcripts of
all Orthodox and
Roman Catholic records existing there. The starting dates vary from 1769 to 1808. The
records continued until
the start of World War I (1914-1915).
- Zagreb (local region): For the last few years a film crew has been
working
with vital records
periodically delivered to it in Zagreb by a government van. The van travels thru the
surrounding countryside,
borrowing church books from archives nearby to bring them in for filming before returning
them the same way.
This interesting project has generated the bulk of the large amount of film from Croatia.
This local project is
expected to continue to be a major source of records extraction film from Croatia in the
foreseeable
future.
- Varazdin: The Historical Archive here has been done, in so far ar
filming its
Orthodox and
Catholic records.
- Zadar and Split: Filming of all Roman Catholic records in the Historical
Archives at these two
coastal cities is complete. Now this crew is starting on the Orthodox records there.
- Dubrovnik and Rijeka: Two new projects have been started at Dubrovnik
and
Rijeka where
Roman Catholic and Orthodox church records are being filmed.
- Languages on Croatian records: Edlund noted the Croatian films
catalogued to
date reflect the
rich and broad range of languages used in this land over the last few centuries: Croatian,
Latin, Hungarian,
Italian, and Glagolitic.
HUNGARY -- In the past, Hungarian parish records were filmed up to an 1895
cutoff, as defined
by the Hungarian 90-year privacy law. While no church books after 1895 have been filmed,
civil records are
being filmed for the period of 1895-1903. Camera crews are active at P‚cs and Budapest on
this project.
RUSSIA -- Ten camera crews are now at work here.
- The major current effort is to film the Russian Orthodox Church books at six
provincial consistories (equivalent to Catholic dioceses): These are Astrakhan, Kazan
(central Russia), Tobolsk, Tomsk (Siberia), Tula and Tver.
- Pskov: This Russian border city just east of Estonia has two camera
crews
currently active. In
addition to filming the Pskov consistory Russian Orthodox church books, some
German-Russian records have
been filmed.
- German-Russian Black Sea Region Films: The 136-reel St. Petersburg
Lutheran consistory church
records have been microfilmed and catalogued. These records are now available from the
FHL. However, only
the Salt Lake City FHL has them on its computer catalog. A 178-page index and a 452-page
register are in
process as of late July and is expected to be on the annual update of the FHL Catalog on
CD-ROM when it is
released this fall -- look for it around November 1994 (Webmaster's Note: This was
released in the late spring
of 1995)
UKRAINE -- Four camera crews are here. One camera crew is in Cheringof
and two are in the
capital of Kiev. They are all concentrating on Russian Orthodox church records. One crew
in Ukraine's Lviv (Polish: Lwow; German: Lemberg) is now filming Greek Catholic
records. These are of major interest to the hundreds of thousands of this faith who
emigrated to western Canada and their descendants.
Second priority at Lviv now is Russian Orthodox records. These are so extensive they may
well take up to 15 years to complete the filming project, however it is not unusual to have
filming projects of such a duration due to the size of certain archival collections. Jewish
synagogue records exist at Lviv, and these will eventually be filmed too.
BELARUS -- Two camera crews are active here. One in Grodno is filming
consistory records of the Russian Orthodox Church. Some of these start in the mid 1700's.
A film crew in the capital, Minsk is filming Russian Orthodox consistory records and
Lutheran consistory records. They also have some tax revision (= census) lists to film in
Minsk.
BULGARIA -- One crew in Sofia is now filming post-1890 civil registration
records.
Author's Postscript: November 6, 1995 Please remember the above article is
based on an interview dated 1994. And while it is over one year old, it can easily take
several years for a reel of film to be transported, developed, cataloged, indexed, posted in
the central FHL computer and released on the Family History Library Catalog on CD-ROM
and fiche.
Patience and watchful waiting are two important virtues of East European
record searchers today. Much of the filming described above will still not be available for
another year or more. Patience is needed in avoiding attempts to contact librarians or
catalogers directly. Such well-intentioned efforts only cause further delay in the cataloging
and release of important films desired by many of us in the future.
Some of these projects are of a long term nature. Other filming projects require the special
language skills for Library Scientists skilled in all of the many foreign languages involved.
It is a constant source of amazement to me that the accomplishments of the Genealogical
Society of Utah in general and the negotiators, film crews and catalogers in particular are so
great, considering the extraordinary difficulties they face. We all owe them a debt of
gratitude.
copyright 1994 and 1995 by John D. Movius; all rights
reserved
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