| Logan Kleinwaks has created a cross reference between names and pages
using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for several Polish Business
Directories. You can now use his Historical Directory Search Engine
to locate pages of interest in this 1929 Directory and then view the
actual pages using our Table of Contents.
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The 1929 Polish Business
Directory Project
The Polish Business Directories of the 1920s and 1930s
have thousands of pages of information about people in current and former areas of Poland,
including regions now part of the Vilna area of Lithuania, the Grodno area of Belarus, and
Volhynia and East Galicia, now parts of the western Ukraine.
Click to view full size
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These listings not only tell us how our
families earned their living but often they are the only accessible source of 20th century
information about our relatives. The 1929 directory is the base for the project.
Entries typically include the name of the business or
proprietor, and the address or street name. The directory has an section with a list of
Industries/Businesses with translations from English to Polish, French to Polish, German
to Polish and Russian to Polish. Within the directory pages, Industries/Businesses are
listed in Polish with a French translation, and range from doctor and banker to midwife
and stall-operator at the weekly marketplace. Each town listing starts with information
about the town, the larger the town, the more comprehensive the description.
Researchers having access to this business directory
from other years are encouraged to check them against the data for their towns in the 1929
directory and to provide a list of entries that are not included in the 1929 edition. Data
from other years will be identified by the year of publishing of the directory.
Sample of Polish Business Directory page
Information available in business directory Searches
The business directory database will be searchable on
the following fields or combinations of fields:
Surname
Given Name
Surname with Given Name
Industry/Business
Street/Town
Wojewodztwo (province)
Powiat (district)
A wojewodztwo (voivodie): geographic designation of
Poland between World War I and World War II, roughly equivalent to a state in the United
States or province in Canada. Powiats were districts, similar to U.S. counties. Powiats
were divided into Uchastoks, more or less equivalent to U.S. townships. Searches may be
made using Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex.
Table of Industry/Business
Using the official translations provided in the
directory, JRI-Poland has created a Polish/French/English Table
of Industry/Business types. The table may be downloaded for personal research or used
for the data entry referred to below.
Researchers should note that the exact meaning of an
Industry or Business and/or the way it is translated can change over time; it the industry
or business is unclear, secondary sources should be consulted. English speaking
researchers should be aware that the translations from the Polish are British English not
North American English. Thus Elektromonterzy which is translated as Electrical Fitters in
the directory, would be known as Electricians in the U.S. and Canada.
Phase One: Creation of the searchable Town Index
The first phase of the project - to create an on-line
searchable Town Index using the information provided in the Directory - is now complete.
Click here to search the database. Click here
for a list of all volunteers who helped with the data entry.
Phase Two: Data entry of the individual names from each
town
Volunteers
are needed to enter the data associated with individual names on each page.
To view the directory pages in PDF format, click here. All pages are in PDF format. If you do not have the
software, the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader can be downloaded here without charge.
Until the completion of Phase 2 data entry, PDF images will be
copy-protected (i.e. cannot be printed).
Data Entry Procedures
The JRI-Poland Business Directory project depends upon
volunteers; participation from a large number of researchers will be necessary to complete
the work. The process is as follows:
Volunteers will download a Data Entry Template
(spreadsheet) with a pre-inserted Industry/Business list (see below). Each volunteer will
choose (or will be assigned) a minimum of 10 pages which are available on-line in
Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Volunteers will send an e-mail message to the Business Directory
Coordinator with a list of the pages selected and the Coordinator will register the
volunteer’s name in an on-line table. This will insure that there is no duplication
of effort. Volunteers will be able to save their chosen on-line pages ‘to file.’
The information is to be entered into the Data Entry Template (spreadsheet) template
using the examples in the template as a guide. The policy of the project is to include
EVERY individual listed in EACH town. Incomplete lists will not be accepted. Detailed instructions
for this data entry may be downloaded here. Note that
your computer must have the Central European fonts installed to correctly display all of this
document. When the data entry of the 10 or more pages has been completed, volunteers are to
double-check their work with another person to ensure accuracy. Completed files are to be
submitted to the Business Directory Project Database Manager. After verification by the
project’s quality control team, files will be uploaded to the Business Directory database.
Data Entry Template
Because the data entry is both more complex, and on a much
greater scale than any individual town vital records, a special template is available in
Microsoft Excel spreadsheet format. It includes all Industries/Businesses listed in the
directory via a pull-down menu to simply data entry and assure consistency. The template
also enforces certain standards in other fields. Your computer must have the Central European
fonts installed to correctly display the fields in this spreadsheet. Instructions for
installing the Multilanguage Support that includes this font group are described here.
The evolution of the project
The JRI-Poland Business Directory Project was announced
at the Annual Conference on Jewish Genealogy in July, 1998. However, due to unanticipated
administrative difficulties and associated costs with the original plan, the decision was
made -- following the Jewish Genealogy Conference in August, 1999 - to create a more
efficient distribution system by scanning the microfilms of the directory to CD ROM and
e-mailing the pages to volunteers.
In a further step to simplify the project, JRI-Poland
and JewishGen reached an agreement to work in cooperation on the project and to post the
entire directory on the web. This agreement was announced at the International Conference
on Jewish Genealogy in Salt Lake City (July 2000). This approach will eliminate costly and
cumbersome photocopying and snail mail distribution of pages to volunteers around the
world as well as make the directory pages immediately available to researchers.
The initial contributions
While the project was in transition, copies of
some pages were made available to several volunteers so that various approaches could be
tested. The following areas/towns will be part of the initial database.
NOWOGRODEK WOJEWODZTWO: The indexing of the 40
pages for this area of former Poland (now in western Belarus and southeastern Lithuania)
was done by Ellen Sadove Renck. There are more than 15,000 entries from towns and
villages. The entire list of entries for this area may be viewed on the Nowogrodek Business
Directory web site which is an advance part of the JRI-Poland Business Directory
project.
KRAKOW: Data entry by Julian Schamroth
(Jerusalem). There are 9600 entries for more than 600 Industries/Businesses.
OSTROW MAZOWIECKA: Data entry by Judy Baston.
Howard Fink,
JRI-Poland Business Directory Project, Data Coordinator |
