“All Country” and “All Topic” Databases

“All Country” Databases

Historical perspective

The earliest genealogical-related records of value to Jewish researchers generally date back to the end of the 18th century.  Since that time, the political boundaries of Europe (principally of Central and Eastern Europe) have undergone many changes.  Thus, genealogists must undertake research with an understanding of the political history of the towns and areas of interest.

For example, the city now known as "Lviv, Ukraine", was formerly known as "Lemberg, Galicia, Austria" before World War I.  Between the world wars it was known as "Lwów, Poland".  After WWII it was "L'vov, U.S.S.R.", and since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, it has been known as "Lviv, Ukraine".  Thus this city has been in four different countries — the Austrian Empire (Galicia), Poland, the Soviet Union, and Ukraine — at various points in time.

In the early years of Internet on-line research, when there were few databases available, checking them all was a simple and relatively fast process.  However, as the interest in Jewish genealogy has grown and as databases housed on JewishGen have multiplied, finding and searching all the available information has become time-consuming, and keeping up-to-date with newly added data in all the databases has become very difficult.

Meeting the needs of researchers in the growing world of JewishGen databases . . .
The mission of JewishGen is to enhance the ability of all researchers to find relevant data by providing easily accessible information.  To accomplish this objective, JewishGen has — in consultation with both its in-house and independent content providers — developed a "regional database" strategy and integration protocol to handle the problems of overlapping areas/borders.  This initiative is to prevent any single database provider from denying ease of accessibility to researchers, and to ensure that all data related to a specific region will be available in a one-time search of that region's database.

Regional Databases — the solution

To ensure the success of our database integration protocol, JewishGen has established the following principles:

1. Data applicable to one or more regions is made available in each applicable region's “All Country” database.
2. Each dataset has a "primary source" tag to identify the individual / project / organization under which it was created.  All web pages, search results and any other information provided by the JewishGen's aggregated databases (an “All Country” or “All Topic” database) shall clearly identify all data from each "primary source", with full clear attribution given to each dataset's creator/contributor.
3. The “All Country” databases and their management shall have no rights to the primary source data, other than to display it in their database.
4. Database content providers shall be consulted on all matters relating to sharing of data, but shall not have the rights to deny sharing of such data where it is deemed appropriate by the JewishGen Database Sharing Committee. (See "Data Placement", below).
5. Full rights to any enhancements to the primary data, created by a aggregated database (i.e. an “All Country” or “All Topic” database), shall accrue to the primary source.  Example: adding notes to entries, extending fields in entries (extracts), or any improvement of any kind.

JewishGen currently has 14 “All Country” databases:

Other “All Country” databases are contemplated (e.g.: a "JewishGen Israel Database", "JewishGen Southern Africa Database", "JewishGen Latin America Database", etc.), once a significant quantity of data for those areas becomes available, and respective database managers for each come forward.  There are also specific political, linguistic and technical issues for each region.

Hosted Databases:
Note that the 14 “All Country” databases listed in the table above are JewishGen databases, managed by JewishGen.  JewishGen also hosts two other composite databases — the JRI-Poland Database, and the LitvakSIG's "All Lithuania Database" (ALD) — whose contents are managed by independent organizations, and are hosted by JewishGen.

However, the entire contents of these two "hosted" databases are included within the "JewishGen Poland Database" and "JewishGen Lithuania Database", respectively.  The hosted databases are sub-sets of the respective JewishGen “All Country” databases.

Dataset Attribution:
If a dataset relevant to Lithuania is donated to JewishGen, then that data will be made available to researchers via the "JewishGen Lithuania Database" interface, as per item #1 above.  (And possibly via other interfaces, such as a neighboring region's “All Country” database, or an “All Topic” database, as determined by the JewishGen Database Sharing Committee).  The LitvakSIG will not have any rights to this data (as per item #3 above).  The contributor of this dataset retains all the rights, and their copyright, introduction/description and attribution will appear in all instances of their data (as per item #2 above).

For an example of how this attribution works, look at the JewishGen Latvia Database, which contains data contributed by two different organizations (the independent Latvia SIG, and JewishGen's Courland Research Group), as well as by other individuals.  Each dataset is properly attributed to its original donors/authors/compilers, wherever that data appears in any interface.

Overlapping regions

Each locality in "JewishGen Communities Database" belongs to exactly one distinct non-overlapping "Region", for database integration purposes.

Consider a map of Europe, and mark on it the various countries/regions that have existed over time.  There is significant overlap, due to shifting historical borders.  Think of each marked region as having its own unique color, and each overlapping area also having its own unique color.  We need to distinguish each uniquely colored area.  There will be about two dozen distinct regions.

These non-overlapping regions, as JewishGen has defined them, are:

The names in capital letters in the second column indicate which “All Country” database(s) that region is included in.  An asterisk (*) following a name in the second column indicates the political entity where that region is located today.

Some regions are included in more than one “All Country” database.  For example, data for the city of Marijampolė and the surrounding area (northern Suwałki) is included in both the "JewishGen Poland Database" and "JewishGen Lithuania Database", because this area was in both Poland and Lithuania, at various points in time.

However, we will draw some arbitrary lines, to avoid absurd amounts of overlap.  Namely, for inter-war Poland — which included nearly all of Grodno, Vilna, and Volhynia gubernias, as well as parts of Minsk gubernia — we will not include all Vilna and Minsk area data in the "JewishGen Poland Database", unless the data is part of a larger inter-war dataset that otherwise qualifies for inclusion in that database (i.e.: a nation-wide dataset, such as the 1929 Polish Business Directory).  [See "Geographical Regions for the All Poland Database" for details].

This also breaks down rather nicely by gubernia (and we use other pre-WWI historical jurisdictions as pseudo-gubernias for non-Czarist regions).  The "Region" field for each locality in the "JewishGen Communities Database" places things in the right “All Country” database(s).

Of course there are a handful of historical anomalies — short-lived territories, small border disputes, tiny regions that changed hands multiple times, etc. — that can't easily be accommodated by the regional system, and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.  We can't do everything without the system becoming ridiculously complex.

“All Country” Database Scope

The geographical scope of each “All Country” database encompasses the maximum extent of that country's historical borders.  Therefore, there can be overlap with an “All Country” database(s) for neighboring regions.  In all these cases, the data for the overlapping region is "shared", and appears in multiple “All Country” databases.  For example:

• The "JewishGen Poland Database" covers all localities that are or were in Poland during the past two centuries.  This includes areas that are now in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, and areas that were previously in Germany. 
  See the map in "Geographical Regions for the All Poland Database" for details.
  See the box at the right for the list of filterable regions included in the "JewishGen Poland Database".
  There is data-sharing with the JewishGen Germany, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine databases.
• The "JewishGen Lithuania Database" covers all of "historic Lithuania" — all of modern Lithuania, plus all of pre-WWI Vilna gubernia (part of which was in Poland between the two world wars, and is now in Belarus).  See "Geographical Regions for the JewishGen Lithuania Database" for details.
  There is data-sharing with the JewishGen Belarus, Germany and Poland databases.
• The "JewishGen Hungary Database" covers all of pre-WWI Hungary — which is all of present-day Hungary and Slovakia, plus northern Croatia, northern Serbia, northwestern Romania (Transylvania), eastern Austria (Burgenland), and SubCarpathian Ukraine.
  There is data-sharing with the JewishGen Romania and Ukraine databases.
• The "JewishGen Ukraine Database" covers all of modern Ukraine — which includes several pre-WWI Russian Empire gubernias, parts of the pre-WWI Austrian provinces of Galicia and Bukovina, and the pre-WWI Hungarian counties (megyék) which were in eastern Czechoslovakia between the wars (today's Zakarpattia Oblast).
  There is data-sharing with the JewishGen Hungary, Poland and Romania databases.
• The "JewishGen Romania Database" covers all of inter-war Romania — which consisted of all of Romania's current area, plus Bessarabia (from the Russian Empire, now in mostly in Moldova), northern Bukovina (from the Austrian Empire, now in Ukraine), and southern Dobruja (now in Bulgaria).  See "Geographical Regions for the JewishGen Romania Database" for details.
  There is data-sharing with the JewishGen Hungary and Ukraine databases.

“All Topic” Databases

In addition to the “All Country” databases, there are also overlapping “All Topic” databases, which cut across geographic lines.  “All Topic” databases combine similar record types, regardless of locality.  This adds a third dimension to the “All Country” overlapping regions.

Examples of JewishGen “All Topic” databases include:

• the Yizkor Book Necrology Database, which indexes lists of Holocaust martyrs published in Yizkor Books;
• the Yizkor Book Master Name Index (YBMNI), which indexes the names of all persons mentioned in the translated Yizkor Books;
• the JewishGen Holocaust Database, which contains Holocaust-related data – from Yad Vashem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and other sources;
• the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR), which indexes cemetery and burial records;
• the JewishGen Memorial Plaques Database, which indexes synagogue yahrzeit plaques and other memorial records.

Future “All Topic” databases currently in various stages of planning include a "Sephardic Database", and a "Prenumerantn Database".

“All Topic” / “All Country” Database Sharing:

All data contributed to any of the above “All Topic” databases will also automatically be included in the appropriate JewishGen “All Country” database(s) (if an “All Country” database currently exists for that region), and vice-versa.

For example, all data for Latvian cemeteries contributed to JOWBR will also be searchable via the "JewishGen Latvia Database"; all burials in Belarus will be searchable via the "JewishGen Belarus Database", etc.  Conversely, any cemetery/burial data contributed to the "JewishGen Belarus Database" will also be made available to researchers via JOWBR.

Another example: The names in the JewishGen Yizkor Book Necrology Database from Yizkor Books for Polish towns will be searchable via the "JewishGen Poland Database" interface; names from Yizkor Books for Lithuanian towns will become searchable via the "JewishGen Lithuania Database", etc.
See more examples below.

Data Placement

The JewishGen Database Sharing Committee will determine in which “All Country” and/or “All Topic” database(s) each contributed dataset will be placed — in consultation with the database contributor and the respective database managers.

The primary criteria for data placement is what will be most convenient and useful for the researchers — who are the end users of the databases.  The users are concerned only with accessibility; not with who created/indexed/donated the data.

To use an analogy: When a book is donated to or acquired by a library, it goes on a shelf with other books on the same topic — for the convenience of the library patrons — as determined by the librarian, in consultation with standard cataloging rules.  A book about Lithuania is placed next to other books about Lithuania — without regard to the author/publisher.  In the library catalog, the book is still clearly indicated as being by a particular author and publisher, and has all of the donor's information — but its shelf location is determined purely by its subject matter, since that's what the patrons really care about.  A patron looking for information about Lithuania will naturally search under "Lithuania", not under the name of a book's author, publisher, or donor.  It is the book's content that is of primary concern, and the same holds true for databases.

Examples:

The database sharing protocol is currently implemented in all of JewishGen's “All Country” and “All Topic” databases.  Here are two examples of how this works:

• See the Vsia Rossiia business directory data for localities in Belarus (Minsk, Mogilev and Vitebsk gubernias), described at http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/vsia/vsiabelarus.htm.   This data is searchable via both the JewishGen Belarus Database (an “All Country” database), and via the Vsia Rossiia Database (an “All Topic” database).
  In both cases, the search results direct the researcher back to the same primary source, giving full credit to the original compiler of that dataset.

• The 40,000 names from the necrologies of Yizkor Books for towns in Belarus are searchable from both the JewishGen Belarus Database (an “All Country” database), and via the Yizkor Book Necrology Database (an “All Topic” database).
  In both cases, the search results direct the researcher back to the same primary source, giving full credit to the original compiler of that dataset.

Here are some additional hypothetical examples.  The diagram below represents four hypothetical datasets (represented by circles), contributed by various groups and individuals, and four “All Country” / “All Topic” database search interfaces (represented by rectangular buttons) which allow access to this data:

1. “Kraków Cemetery”, donated by JRI-Poland.  It is searchable via both the "JewishGen Poland Database", and via the "JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry" (JOWBR) database — because Kraków is in Poland, and because this is cemetery data, respectively.

2. “Mariampol Births”, donated by user ABC.  It is searchable via both "JewishGen Poland Database" interface, and via the "JewishGen Lithuania Database" interface — because Marijampolė was in Poland, and is now in Lithuania. (Region #6, Northern Suwałki).

3. “Białystok Deportations”, donated by user DEFG.  It is searchable via both "JewishGen Poland Database", and via the "JewishGen Holocaust Database" interface — because Białystok is Poland, and this is data relating to the Holocaust.

4. “Kovno Ghetto Burials”, donated by user XYZ.  It is searchable via three interfaces: the "JewishGen Lithuania Database"; and via the "JewishGen Holocaust Database"; and via the "JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry" (JOWBR) — because Kovno is Lithuania, this is data relating to the Holocaust, and this is burial data, respectively.