JewishGen Talks: The Alex Krakovsky Project: Navigating the Wiki to Locate Town Records

ABOUT OUR PROGRAM:
Gary Pokrassa, Data Acquisition Director of JewishGen’s Ukraine Research Division, will present on Alex Krakovsky’s Wiki and records digitization projects. Alex is a Ukrainian, who, using freedom of information laws in Ukraine, forced virtually every archive to permit him to scan their records and post them to an online wiki page, yielding a massive amount of raw data for the Ukraine researcher. Gary will go through Alex’s postings and describe how to navigate the Wiki to locate town records and how to find hidden data not obvious on the home page.
Gary will also describe the Ukraine Research Group’s project to capture Alex’s scanned files on the JewishGen server, which includes Index files for several of the larger cities including Kiev, Zhitomir Nikolaev and Odessa, and how the Ukraine Research Group is using these files in translation projects. He will speak on changes that have taken place since last August. A robust question and answer will be included in this evening’s presentation, as well as an overview of JewishGen’s Ukraine Research Division.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Gary Pokrassa retired five years ago from a 46-year career, the last 11 as CFO of Lakeland Industries Inc. He is the Data Acquisition Director for the Ukraine Research Division of JewishGen, Treasurer and Director of JRI-Poland, and town leader for 4 shtetls. He is a member of the JGS of Long Island. At the 2020 IAJGS Conference, he presented on Alex Krakovsky and his Wiki and was a panelist on the Ukraine Research Division Meeting. Gary has authored an article on the Alex Krakovsky project published in AVOTAYNU Summer 2020 and also lectures on other topics, including an Intro to Jewish Genealogy.
Joel Spector is a Past President of the Jewish Genealogical [and Archival] Society of Greater Philadelphia, where he has also been chairperson of its Russian Special Interest Group. Joel is a former Secretary of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and now serves as its Archivist. Currently Joel is a member of the Ukraine Research Division and serves as its Director of Metric Record Projects. Joel has been actively engaged in genealogy for over 30 years and has been conducting research in several historic Russian language encyclopedias. He has produced a unique English language Index to the Russian language Evreiskaya Entsiklopedia. Joel has given presentations and workshops on the Russian language, both contemporary and pre-Revolutionary, and has provided translations of documents to individuals and groups. Joel has been conducting Russian language research and has given presentations and workshops on the Russian language, both contemporary and pre-Revolutionary, and has provided translations of documents to individuals and groups.