Judy Baston serves as LitvakSIG Vice President, and is on the Board of LitvakSIG and the Executive Committee and Board of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland. For more than 15 years, she has moderated the Discussion Groups of LitvakSIG and JRI-Poland, and she also moderates the BialyGen, and Lodz discussion groups, and coordinates LitvakSIG’s Lida District and Oshmiany District Research Groups.

She has been involved with the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco for 24 years and coordinates their Genealogy Clinic.

In July, 2015, Judy received the IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award at the organization’s conference in Jerusalem.

Lida District BOF/Oshmiany District BOF (Thurs-168), 9:00-10:15 A.M.)

Judy Baston will lead discussions regarding these two Birds of a Feather groups.

BOF sessions for the Lida District and the Oshmiany District will offer researchers a chance to network with each other, learn about newly translated records and cover resources available on the Internet.

The Lida District BOF meeting starts at 9:00 A.M. and covers the Lida District twelve official towns of registration – Belitsy, Eisiskes, Lida, Novy Dwor, Orlya, Ostryna, Radun, Rozhanka, Shchuchin, Vasilishki, Voronava and Zhaludok . Eisiskes is today in Lithuania; all others are today in Belarus. 

The Oshmiany District BOF meeting will start at 9:45 A.M. The district includes 15 officla towns of registration: Derevna, Dieviniskes, Golshany, Ivye, Krevo, Lipnishki, Naliboki, Oshmiany, Smorgon, Soly, Traby, Volozhin, Vishnevo, Zaskevishi, and Zhuprany.

“Researching Your Litvak Roots — with LitvakSIG and More” (Thurs-107), 3:00-4:15 P.M.

With translations of more than 1.5 million Lithuanian Jewish records — censuses and vital records key among them — LitvakSIG’s publicly searchable All Lithuania Database provides the primary foundation for Litvak genealogical research. There are also numerous additional sources online for researching your Litvak heritage.

This presentation will offer an overview of the LitvakSIG website, database and Research Groups, as well as various other sources. It will detail the best ways to use key Litvak databases and websites to achieve optimum results and enhance your knowledge of your Litvak heritage.

The presentation will include how to determine what records are available, how to optimize, read and understand search results, where the records are, and how best to access the information in them. The presentation will cover LitvakSIG and its All Lithuania Database, as well as numerous other resources from JewishGen, Yad Vashem and other sources.

Topics: Ashkenazic research, Lithuania

“It’s All in How You Ask: Getting the Most from Discussion Group Queries” (Fri-117), 8:30-9:45 A.M.

For thousands of Jewish genealogical researchers, the first places they turn when they need to identify a town, find a long-lost family member or understand a search result are the discussion groups of JewishGen and regional Special interest Groups. Longtime Jewish genealogical discussion group moderators Judy Baston and Renee Steinig will discuss what makes messages to the various Jewish genealogical discussion groups most –- and occasionally, least — effective.

How much information is needed to help someone provide a useful answer? And how much might be too much? What facts might attract the attention of someone familiar with the towns and families you are seeking — and what facts might be confusing?

Many of these guidelines can also be helpful for researchers sending queries through the JewishGen Family Finder, for example. The presentation will also include a brief overview of the guidelines under which discussion groups run and hosted by JewishGen operate.

[presented with Renee Steinig]

Topic: Methodology