3 July 2014
What a wonderful site! ... DNA projects, census and passport projects, cadastral maps, landowner projects, archival inventories, a 20-year run of journals, research tips, and much, much more.
The society that sponsors this well-built site describes itself and its mission this way: "Gesher Galicia ... promotes and conducts Jewish genealogical and historical research for Galicia, a province of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is today part of eastern Poland and southwestern Ukraine.
"Our major research initiative—The Galician Archival Records Project—is acquiring and indexing a variety of metrical, property, school, voter, tax and magnate records for Galicia. Although our organization's primary focus is researching Jewish roots in Galicia, the diverse community records in our databases contain names that span all the ethnic and religious groups that once lived in this region,"
Gesher Galicia <http://www.geshergalicia.org/> well lives up to the society's goals.
IMAGE SOURCE: "The Cadastral Map and Landowner Records Project," Gesher Galicia (http://www.geshergalicia.org/projects/cadastral-map-and-landowner-records/), partial image from register described in its "Inventory of Cadastral Maps & Archival Records" as "Boryslav Book of Landowners," 19th Century, Lviv Archives: 186-1-4395.
Thanks!
Hi, and thanks for the article! We're so glad you like the site!
Doing research in defunct Austro-Hungarian provinces can be tricky, because the spotty surviving records ended up scattered to so many different modern countries' archives: Polish, Ukrainian, Austrian, Israeli, American, etc. Some of the records are microfilmed but a lot are not. We're trying to pull it all back together into a big online one-stop shop for our researchers and members.
We finally overhauled our entire online presence -- websites, social media, etc. -- about two years ago. We are working hard to put a lot of new data online that has previously only sat on dusty archive shelves, with a free online search engine called the All Galicia Database with 280,000+ records (and counting). We scan, stitch together, and publish online maps (Cadastral, military, etc.) in high resolution in our "Map Room" -- all free! And as you mentioned, we publish a quarterly journal with loads of articles and research tips.
And finally, because this is the EE blog, I should add that Gesher Galicia welcomes members from everywhere, even ones who don't always cite their sources properly. :-)
- Brooke Schreier Ganz
outgoing VP of Gesher Galicia (and the one who built the website)
You're welcome, Brooke. You
You're welcome, Brooke. You've created a valuable resource. Like GG, EE also welcomes users who "don't always cite their sources properly." We're all still learning.