Computer Workshops

Computer workshops suitable for researchers with limited to intermediate experience are scheduled during the Conference and have been added to the registration form with a fee of $35 per session.

 A working knowledge of PC and Internet use will make for a more productive learning experience. Also, please note that one session requires at least a basic knowledge of using spreadsheets.

Attendance is limited to 10 participants for each session. A waiting list will keep track of names for those who will be notified in case of a cancellation. If an opening develops, you may accept or decline, depending on your schedule. Depending on the size of waiting lists, we may be able to schedule repeat presentations.

Below are program descriptions and instructors’ biographies repeated from the Conference schedule, which is available from the PROGRAM menu above.

Registration questions: registration@iajgs2016.org
Program questions: program@iajgs2016.org

Sunday, August 7

9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Publish or Perish – Create Your Family Newsletter with Microsoft Publisher
Banai Lynn Feldstein, Feldstein Genealogy Services

About the presentation: All genealogists must eventually compile their family research in an organized fashion and publish in order to share it with their relatives. Banai has been publishing a family newsletter for more than ten years and will show you how to use Microsoft Publisher to create your own. Banai will teach some of the basics of using the program and offer tips for how to compile the data into a newsletter you will be proud to share with your relatives. General computer literacy is a prerequisite.

About the instructor:  Banai Lynn Feldstein is a professional genealogist specializing in Jewish and Eastern European research. She lives in Salt Lake City where she is the Webmaster and Past President of the Utah Jewish Genealogical Society and served as co-chair of the 2014 IAJGS conference in Salt Lake  City.

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Record Searching with IGRA
Garri Regev

About the presentation: Finding records for relatives who passed through or lived in Israel (or Eretz Yisrael) can be challenging. IGRA has been indexing, digitizing and preparing databases from materials available in many of the archives in Israel and some located elsewhere. With the language challenge, a bilingual search engine and filters help focus on specific areas. Join me in a hands-on workshop emphasizing how to make the most of this unusual collection. Part of the time will also relate to the Montefiore census records that do not actually sit on the IGRA site but can be accessed through a link. Beneficial for all interested in research in this area of the world.

About the instructor: Garri Regev has lived in Israel since 1978 and was an elementary teacher for more than 20 years there. Garri has been doing genealogical research for more than 20 years. She has lectured in genealogy to many adult groups, including Hadassah, Touro College, the Central Zionist Archives, EVA/MINERVA and IAJGS Conferences. Garri currently volunteers at the Israel Museum, at the CZA and the NLI Genealogy Center. She was president of the Israel Genealogical Society and is currently president of the Israel Genealogy Research Association. She was the vice-chair of the 2015 IAJGS Conference in Jerusalem and co-chair of program.

1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Introduction to JewishGen
Debra Kay-Blatt, Jane Tobias

About the presentation:  An introduction to the use of JewishGen, overview of the site, signup and privacy features, introduction to search features including the FamilyFinder and use of the Databases. Introduction to community pages.

About the instructors: Debra Kay-Blatt has lectured at IAJGS conferences internationally. She is a founding member and board member of the JGS of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County. She has published in the Kielce-Radom Special Interest Journal and is a volunteer for JewishGen, JRI-Poland, and the Lodz Area Research Group.

Jane Tobias is currently undergoing her doctorate at University of the West of Scotland, investigating immune responses to probiotics. She had been a fully qualified lecturer for more than 15 years and is heavily involved with undergraduates on Applied Bioscience degree programs as well as supervising many undergraduate research projects. She has a vast range of research skills both on and off-line. Jane may be a new researcher in genealogical terms but has learned a great deal in the 15 years attending international IAJGS conferences and from her husband, Michael.

3:15 p.m. – 4:45 p.m .

JRI-Poland,  a Workshop for Beginners
Roni Liebowitz, Hadassah Lipsius

About the presentation: This hands-on beginner’s workshop will explore the JRI-Poland website and allow the participant to practice initiating basic searches in the database. The goal of the session will be to introduce the JRI-Poland search screens and help the researcher understand search results. The workshop will explore narrowing techniques for managing large results and provide hints for effectively using the two-stage results screen. Experience using the Internet is recommended, but no experience with the JRI-Poland database is necessary.

Note: All participants must have a Jewishgen ID and know their password. To obtain an account, please go to Jewishgen.org and register.

About the instructors: Roni Seibel Liebowitz is immediate past president of Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc. (NY) serving from 2012 through 2014, and vice president of programming from 2009 through 2011. A board member of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, she is archive coordinator for Lodz and town leader for Belchatow. She serves as coordinator of JewishGen’s Lodz Area Research Group and Kehilalinks for Lodz and Belchatow, Poland. As consultant/participant in a documentary about a World War II liberator and survivors, she traveled the United States, Poland and Israel interviewing subjects. In January 1997, she began her own family research. She is a retired speech and language pathologist.

Hadassah Lipsius is a board member of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, a board of governor of JewishGen, the database manager for the Warszawa Research Group and a member of the Executive Committee of Jewish Genealogy, Inc (New York). She also serves as the archive coordinator for Warszawa and Tomaszow Mazowiecki. She has degrees in metallurgical engineering and is Supplier Quality Engineering Manager for a major defense contractor. Hadassah takes pride that her family were city dwellers (Warszawa, St Petersburg and Vilnius) for more than 200 years.

Monday, August 8

9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Exploring Polish online archival and library resources
Vladyslava Moskalets

About the presentation: In the recent years, Polish governmental institutions were granted millions of dollars to digitize the Polish national archival holdings. The Polish internet is full of interesting and revealing materials. What makes researching these sources difficult is that they are distributed among tens of distinct web services. Moreover, they are often poorly indexed by popular search engines. This workshop will help you to search online for genealogical information on your family: prewar Polish newspapers, journals and archival document collections. It will give an overview of  search methods and websites, where  information on family history can be found. Among others: http://searcharchives.pl/, Malopolska Digital Library, Central Jewish Library. Knowledge of Polish is not required.

About the instructor: Vladyslava Moskalets is a graduate student at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, a freelance genealogist and member of JewishFamilySearch.com. She researches kinship among Jewish families in the the Drohobych and Boryslav business milieu (1860-1914). She was awarded a scholarship by the Ludmer Program for Jewish History and Culture in Galicia and Bukovina. Vladyslava coordinates the Jewish Studies Program at Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv. She also worked on several documentaries on Jews in Galicia. Her academic interests include economics, family history, history of Eastern European Jewry and Yiddish.

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Planting a Family Tree Online with MyHeritage
Daniel Horowitz

About the presentation: This program will guide you step by step to build your tree on the friendly and free online family tree website MyHeritage.com. You will learn how to enter detailed information, navigate across the tree, to upload images,  to invite family members and to share information with them in 43 languages to get calendar alerts on family events. Take advantage of the latest technologies MyHeritage uses to help you grow your tree, finding long lost relatives and historical records for many in your family tree.

About the instructor: Daniel Horowitz, chief genealogist at MyHeritage, was a teacher and the study guide editor for more than  15 years of the family history project “Searching for My Roots” in Venezuela. At MyHeritage he provides key contributions in the areas of product development, customer support and public affairs. With  more than 25 years of experience, he holds board level positions with the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) among others. A power genealogist, researcher and lecturer himself, has a deep understanding of the needs of today’s family history enthusiasts.

1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

JRI-Poland Intermediate Workshop – Advanced Search and Image Links
Hadassah Lipsius, Roni Liebowitz

About the presentation: This hands-on workshop will focus on how to make the most of your JRI-Poland database search. It is geared for intermediate researchers and will provide hints, tips and a strategy to help find that elusive family member hidden on the JRI-Poland database. With actual images of millions of Polish Jewish records now available online from multiple sources and linked from the JRI-Poland search results, the workshop will also focus on how a search of the JRI-Poland online database can connect a researcher with digital images of the record.

Note: All participants must have a Jewishgen ID and know their password. To obtain an account please go to Jewishgen.org and register.

About the instructors: Hadassah Lipsius is a board member of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, a board of governor of JewishGen, the database manager for the Warszawa Research Group and a member of the Executive Committee of Jewish Genealogy, Inc (New York). She also serves as the archive coordinator for Warszawa and Tomaszow Mazowiecki. She has degrees in metallurgical engineering and is Supplier Quality Engineering Manager for a major defense contractor. Hadassah takes pride that her family were city dwellers (Warszawa, St Petersburg and Vilnius) for more than 200 years.

Roni Seibel Liebowitz is immediate past president of Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc. (NY) serving from 2012 through 2014, and vice president of programming from 2009 through 2011. A board member of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, she is archive coordinator for Lodz and town leader for Belchatow. She serves as coordinator of JewishGen’s Lodz Area Research Group and Kehilalinks for Lodz and Belchatow, Poland. As consultant/participant in a documentary about a World War II liberator and survivors, she traveled the United States, Poland and Israel interviewing subjects. In January 1997, she began her own family research. She is a retired speech and language pathologist.

Tuesday, Aug 9

9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Spreadsheets in Genealogy – A Hands-On Workshop
Mary Roddy, MKR Genealogy

About the presentation:  In this workshop I will guide users through setting up an Excel worksheet. I will demonstrate several of the functions within Excel including copy and paste, wrapping text, sorting, finding, inserting rows and columns and using color in worksheets to bring out patterns in the data. I will discuss data and the limitations of Excel regarding pre-1900 dates and workarounds. Depending on the participants’ facility with Excel, time-permitting I will cover text-to-columns, inputting data directly from searches at Ancestry.com and FamilySearch and filtering.

About the instructor: Mary Roddy, a Certified Public Accountant, earned a certificate from the Genealogy and Family History program at the University of Washington. She is an active member of the Seattle Genealogical Society and speaks frequently in the Seattle area. Mary is a regular contributor to YourGenealogyToday and Internet Genealogy magazines and a frequent webinar presenter with Legacy Family Tree Webinars. Her background in accounting has influenced the way she uses spreadsheets and forensic research in her genealogy. She is working on a novel that incorporates stories of ancestors she has discovered in her research.

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Mapping your Shtetl, A Practical course in Galician Cadaster
Tomasz Jankowski,

About the presentation: Property records have always been a major source for genealogical study when vital records and census data are not available for the region. For many locations in Galicia the cadaster is the only available source. The core part of Galician cadaster are extremely detailed maps and land owner lists created in 1824 to 1854. The maps remained in use until the 1950s. This documentation – once held in Lviv, now distributed among several institutions in Poland and Ukraine – allows the researcher to learn, for example,  address and size of an ancestor’s house and his/her socioeconomic status. The purpose of the workshop is to teach a brief history of Galician cadaster and its original purposes, how to access the documentation in local archives,  how to access selected documentation on line, to  interpret map symbols used on the map, and to relate data in owner lists and vital records to map data.

About the instructor: Tomasz Jankowski holds a Ph.D in history He  is a Jewish genealogist active in Ukraine and Poland, and a founder of jewishfamilysearch.com. He is a graduate of the University of Wroclaw, Poland. His academic research is focused on family history and historical demography of the Jews. In 2010 he was awarded a scholarship by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He cooperates with the Institute for Jewish Genealogy and with the Hebrew University on the analysis of Jewish demographics in light of the 1897 census. Recently he worked for the “Finding Your Roots” television series and the team who discovered  the mikveh of Baal Shem Tov in Kolomyia.