jgpf 6175 980201 Jewish Genealogical People Finder (JGPF) +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ [NEW] Family Tree of the Jewish People [FTJP] A project of the Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ A JewishGen InfoFile +------------------------------------------+ | Family Tree of the Jewish People [FTJP] | | replaces the former: | | Jewish Genealogical People Finder [JGPF] | +------------------------------------------+ AJGS Announces Plans for a Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP) In a major new initiative, the Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (AJGS) has announced plans to create a Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP) in order to disseminate Jewish family tree information worldwide. To participate, Jewish genealogists are invited to submit their computerized family trees to a common database that will permit easy access to information about millions of individuals. This new system is an outgrowth of the AJGS Jewish Genealogical People Finder (JGPF) that existed on microfiche from 1991 to 1995 and which now has more than 300,000 names. Data from the JGPF will be included in the new database. AJGS will distribute the FTJP on CD-ROM at the 18th annual Jewish genealogical seminar to be held in Los Angeles, July 12-16, 1998. Plans also call for the database to become part of the computer system at the Center for Jewish History in New York City, when it opens to the public in spring 1999. The goal is to reach one million names within one year. This is not unreasonable given the number of Jewish genealogists whose family trees are already computerized. All Jewish family trees will be accepted with no prior conditions except that the data must be in GEDCOM- compatible format on IBM-compatible 3" diskettes or Macintosh 1.4MB diskettes. GEDCOM is a standard inter face between genealogical software systems that was developed by the LDS (Mormon) Family History Library. All modern genealogical software systems support this interface. Mail family trees to: Family Tree of the Jewish People, PO Box 26, Cabin John, MD 20818. To appear in the initial distribution at the July conference, disks must reach AJGS by March 31, 1998. There is no charge for submission. For deceased persons, each entry will indicate (if provided) the individual's family name, sex, date and place of birth, date and place of death, father's name, mother's name, spouse's name. For living persons, only the name, sex and linkage to parents and spouse(s) will be provided. For purposes of FTJP, a deceased person is one for whom there is a death date or whose birth date is more than 100 years ago. All other information present in a GEDCOM file will be ignored. Prior to submitting trees, family historians may wish to edit out family secrets or information they consider sensitive. Annulled marriages not normally known outside the immediate family or, in the case of deceased individu als, children born prior to the marriage of their parents, are possible examples. Such editing is not a requirement; however, the database will not release information other than the items listed above. All family names in the complete listing will be arranged according to the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex System to allow spelling variants of identical surnames to appear together. The submitter's name and address will be available to permit those finding matches to contact potential relatives. This is the only way that additional information will be obtainable for living persons. A submitter may update previous information at any time by sending a new disk of their entire family tree with a statement that it is an update. Computer databases of family trees are not new . Two of the best known, already established systems are the Ancestral File of the LDS (Mormon) Family History Library and one at the Douglas E. Goldman Genealogy Center at Beth Hatefutsoth (The Museum of the Diaspora) in Israel. Broderbund Software, a commercial company, sells CD-ROMs with family trees. Contributions to the Broderbund database have been so great that the company has already produced six volumes of CDs. Other family tree databases exist on the Internet. Addendum: ~~~~~~~~ 1. Yes, you can submit family trees in GEDCOM format as a Zipped file to speed up transmission. We will unZip it at our end. If you have more than one tree, submit them all. If you submmit more than one tree and certain persons appear on more than one of the trees, we will eliminate the duplicate records as long as they exactly match. 2. Any GEDCOM file will do. We will only pick up the person's name, sex, date and place of birth, date and place of death, and the links to mother, father and spouse. All other information will be ignored, so if your GEDCOM export program has the ability to ignore other information such as notes, provide us with the smaller file. 3. The initial plan for distribution will be on CD-ROM to the member societies of AJGS. Making the CD available to individuals is under consideration too. 4. Yes, mother's maiden name would be on the tree, a casual security check used in the past by banks and other institutions to confirm you are the individual you claim you are. My personal experience is that banks are no longer using this fact as the sole proof of a person's identity because it has become so commonplace it is no longer a secure method of identifying an individual. In the first week since the announcement, we have already received more than 10,000 entries for FTJP. Keep them coming. You can send the GEDCOM file as an attached e-mail file to vhwc10c@prodigy.com, or on disk to Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies; P.O. Box 26; Cabin John, MD 20818, USA. -------------- [01Feb98gm]bik Provider: Gary Mokotoff +-------------------------------------------------------------------+