Subject: Polish State Archives / JRI-Poland sign historic agreement expanding access to records
From: jripoland@aol.com
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2013 22:13:55 -0500 (EST)
X-Message-Number: 1
On Friday, Feb. 15, the Polish State Archives (PSA) and Jewish Records
Indexing-Poland (JRI-Poland) entered into a new multi-year agreement
that will expand access to Jewish records for thousands of family
historians.
The agreement will enable JRI-Poland to rapidly expand its current
online database of indices to five million records. With the support
of researchers from the hundreds of towns with records in the
JRI-Poland database, indices to more than one million additional
records are expected to become available within a year.
The agreement reflects a resumption of cooperation between the PSA and
JRI-Poland, whose landmark agreement from 1997-2006 resulted in the
indexing of more than four million records whose listings are
searchable in the JRI-Poland database.
JRI-Poland and the PSA will institute a new Order Processing System to
vastly simplify the process of obtaining copies of archival records.
JRI-Poland will have the administrative responsibility for processing
orders for records from branches of the Polish State Archives.
Researchers will be able to place orders by clicking on record index
entries of interest in the JRI-Poland search results and paying by
credit card via the JRI-Poland website.
In a statement reflecting the strong significance of these records and
their importance to family historians around the world, the PSA
announced that they are beginning a massive effort to digitize all
vital records in their more than 30 Regional Archives. These will be
available -- free -- on their National Digital Archives and Regional
Archive websites.
JRI-Poland will serve the research community and PSA by linking its
search results to the PSA's digital images of the Jewish records. As
a result of the massive indexing undertaken by JRI-Poland since 1995,
the indices to Jewish records will form the bulk of all digital image
linking on the PSA website.
The Order Processing System will eventually be phased out as digitized
records become available online.
PSA General Director, Professor Wladyslaw Stepniak observed: "The
signing of this agreement will open a new phase in the cooperation
between JRI-Poland and State Archives in Poland. I am convinced that
the results of our mutual efforts will be helpful for many people
interested in centuries-old Polish-Jewish relations, shared history
and family history research."
To reach this milestone took the combined and diligent efforts of the
JRI-Poland executive committee, Judy Baston, Stanley Diamond, Mark
Halpern and Michael Tobias, and former committee member Hadassah
Lipsius, and the invaluable input of our board members.
We also would like to thank those JRI-Poland Archive Coordinators and
Town Leaders who continued to carry out their responsibilities and
serve researchers around the world during the years leading up to this
new agreement.
Additional information will be posted as we move forward.
The full text of the Jewish Records Indexing - Poland agreement news
release and a video and photographs of the signing ceremony are
available on the JRI-Poland home page at www.jri-poland.org.
Stanley Diamond, Executive Director
For the Board of Jewish Records Indexing - Poland
