"ShtetlMaster" is the internal code-name for a very ambitious project, to unify and link together all of JewishGen's resources.
Currently, all JewishGen resources -- the JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF), ShtetLinks pages, ShtetlSeeker, the Yizkor Book Project, Cemetery Project, various databases, SIG and regional resources, etc. -- all are independent databases, not linked together in any way, and in many cases are redundant or duplications of efforts.
The goal of ShtetlMaster is to create a master database of localities, and then link all JewishGen resources for each locality to this master database. Using this system, a user will be easily able to see all JewishGen resources for any town, rather than having to search multiple locations on JewishGen, under various names.
Whenever and wherever a town name appears in any JewishGen database or web page, it will be a hyperlink, which links to an auto-generated "ShtetlMaster Locality Page" for that locality, which contains links to all of the JewishGen resources available for that town: the JGFF, a ShtetLinks page, Yizkor Book reference(s) and translation(s), Cemetery Project info, any relevant SIGs for the containing region(s), etc., etc.
The ShtetlMaster Locality Page for each town will be similar to those pages in the "Shtetls of Lithuania", "Shtetls of Belarus", and "Shtetls of Romania" sites created by Ed Rosenbaum... which is a great prototype, but has several drawbacks:
The ShtetlMaster Locality Pages generated by the ShtetlMaster project will overcome these flaws and limitations.
Each town's ShtetlMaster Locality Page will contain the basic information for that town: Modern town name; alternate and historical names for the town; latitude and longitude; a small auto-generated inset map of the town's region, centered on that town; the town's political jurisdictions during various time periods; Jewish population figures during various time periods; names of the nearby Jewish communities (within 10-20 miles, with each hyperlinked to its respective ShtetlMaster Locality Page); links to JewishGen resources for that town (JGFF, ShtetLinks, etc.); links to JewishGen resources for the containing regions (SIGs, etc.)
In order to accomplish the ambitious goals of the ShtetlMaster project, there will be two major components required: the programs, and the data. The programs are the computer programming efforts to create the database and all its interfaces. The data is the content -- the names / locations / jurisdictions of all the towns. Each of these two components are massive efforts.
In order to compile the data, we will need "Regional Managers" for the various regions: Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Russian Poland (Kingdom of Poland = Congress Poland), Galicia, Prussia, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia/Moravia (Czech Republic), Slovakia, Romania, Moldova/Bessarabia, Russian Ukraine gubernias, etc. These can be further broken down by gubernia/district/region as needed. See http://www.jewishgen.org/projects/desc/ShtetlMasterRegions.html for more ideas.
Goal: To establish an "authority file" on the Jewish communities within that region.
For each Jewish community, collect the following data:
The precise data structure to be used has not yet been established, but data collection can certainly begin now, and that data can later be transformed into the eventual ShtetlMaster data format.
The set of historical political jurisdictions will vary for each region, as each region has its own history. For example, for the Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland), for each Jewish community I have collected:
For other areas, a different set of years/jurisdications would apply. For instance, in eastern Galicia, the following set might be collected:
Uniquely identifying each town is a USBGN Feature Code Number. This is the ShtetlMaster database's primary key. Place names can not be used as primary keys because place names are not unique (there can be multiple localities with the same name), place names can change, and even latitude / longitide coordinates are not unique (for places that are very close to one another). So we will use the USBGN Feature Code Number, an arbitrary number assigned by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, to unique identify each locality in the ShtetlMaster database.
The use of the USBGN Feature Code will enable future "proximity searches" in all JewishGen databases. For example "show me all STERNBERGs within 20 miles of Grodno" in the JGFF, or some other database, regardless of the current or previous political boundaries.
How to obtain USBGN Feature Code Numbers:
The USBGN Feature Code Number can be obtained from the new improved and soon-to-be-announced ShtetlSeeker, at < http://www.jewishgen.org/ShtetlSeeker/LocTown.asp >.
To obtain the USBGN Feature Code Number, append "#JG#" to the town name in the "Search for town" field, e.g.
Vilna#JG#In the search results page, the USBGN Feature Code Number will appear after all of the towns' names, e.g. "FEAT= -2620663". In this case, the Feature Code Number is "-2620663". Note that it is often a negative number.
The ShtetlMaster database is not meant to contain every tiny hamlet -- that's the job of the ShtetlSeeker, which uses the comprehensive USBGN database. The ShtetlMaster database is for Jewish communities only -- those places with a population of 100 or more Jews at any given time -- places that had a synagogue, or a Jewish cemetery, etc.
Less than 2% of all named localities in Eastern Europe had Jewish communities. For example, there are over 38,000 distinct localities in modern Poland in the USBGN, but there were only about 600 places with 100 or more Jews in Congress Poland (Russian Poland) before WWI. In inter-war Poland (which also encompassed portions of today's Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine), there were 1,415 Jewish communities with populations of over 100 in 1939 -- about 2% of all localities. These are the places that we want to identify and track in ShtetlMaster. There are perhaps only 5,000 such localities total throughout Eastern Europe -- a manageable task, if broken down by the "Regional Managers".
We don't mean to exclude localities from the ShtetlMaster database; we wish to include all Jewish communities. But we need to keep the database manageable and meaningful, which means that we can not include every tiny village and hamlet, which would only clutter the database and make it less meaningful.
We aim to include every locality which had a Jewish population of 100 or more at any period in its history. If any major Judaica or genealogical reference work mentions the Jewish community, we will also include that locality.
For example:
Another reason that we are excluding tiny localities from ShtetlMaster is the phenomenon of multiple localities with the same name. In the vast majority of cases, there's only one of those localities that matter. For example, while there are some twenty locations named "Brooklyn" in the United States, there's only one "Brooklyn" that really matters, when it comes to Jewish genealogy. If someone says that their grandfather lived in "Brooklyn", we know which one they mean. There's no reason to present researchers with a list of twenty "Brooklyn"s -- in Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, or Mississippi -- these would only clutter the database and confuse the researcher. The same reasoning applies to place names like "Aleksandrov" -- there are hundreds of localities by that and similar names in Eastern Europe, but only a tiny handful that matter for Jewish genealogy.
While smaller localities will be excluded from the ShtetlMaster database, they will still be searchable via the ShtetlSeeker. ShtetlSeeker and ShtetlMaster are two different databases, with vastly different purposes. Both will be available to researchers. Researchers need to use the right tool for the right job.
ShtetlMaster will have several different interfaces, that is, different ways of accessing and presenting the underlying data. Among these, the key interfaces are:
The JewishGen ShtetlSeeker is a great tool, but it has several drawbacks as a shtetl locator, namely:
For example, finding a place listed on a document as "Ruzin, Kiev gubernia" is currently a several step process, involving the knowledge and use of several resources, both online and offline. This is a non-trivial task for the inexperienced. The ShtetlMaster search function should make this task much easier.
One should be able to input a name (and any optional filters) and get back a table of matching localities. The results will be in a table, similar to the revised ShtetlSeeker results, but it will include only Jewish communities, together with columns containing more useful qualifying information, such as Jewish population figures, gubernia/district names, etc., which will make it much easier to identify which one is the correct location. The name of each locality will be hyperlinked to the auto-generated ShtetlMaster Locality Page for that locality, as detailed above.
Some possible filters include:
The usual search criteria should also be available: Exact Spelling, Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex, Wildcard, Starts With, etc.
The localities should also be browsable, as they are in the current "Shtetls of XYZ" interface -- only more so. We should also be able to view a geographically hierarchical arrangement of localities, i.e. display a table of all the localities within a particular gubernia, arranged by uyezd -- perhaps in a "folding menu tree" design, similar to the JOWBR Cemetery Inventory.
Here's a list of potential copyright-free sources, to obtain Jewish population figures and jurisdictional data:
For example, for the Kingdom of Poland (Russian Poland, aka Congress Poland), the internal provincial borders changed several times over the past 200 years (see Polish-Jewish Genealogy Questions and Answers, Question #15). I'm using the following sources for each historical time period:
There are similar comprehensive sources for other regions.
Updated Jun 2000, Aug 2000, Aug 28 2001, Jul 30 2003.
Warren Blatt