[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] [BESS-GR] SOAR online from AHSGR now available

[gpvjem]

       The following was passed to me by someone who subscribes to BESS-GR Listserv.  It may be of interest to SGGEE Listserve subscribers whose research takes them into these areas.

John Marsch 
SGGEE.
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From: "Michael Miller" <Michael.Miller at ndsu.edu>
To: <BESS-GR at LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU>
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 10:14 AM

 16 January 2006

 Subject: SOAR is on-line>
 Researching obituaries and other records of Germans from Russia
 is now available from your computer thanks to the SOAR (Saving Our 
 Ancestral Records) On-line Project of the American Historical Society of Germans 
 from Russia International (AHSGR). The address for this new website is
 www.ahsgrsoar.org. (There can be a delay in the updates for all domain 
 name servers (DNS) on the Internet so if the site is not available today, try 
 the address later - I'm told it can take up to 48 hours for the entire  Internet
 to be updated. Cox Communications and Qwest are updated now.)

 Searching SOAR via the Internet is a free resource for everyone, but fees
 will be charged for downloading specific records or pages for the personal
 use of the researcher. Fees for members of AHSGR are considerably less 
 than fees for non-members.

 Internet technology now permits SOAR to begin providing the dissemination of many of the records held by AHSGR beginning with  beginning with more than 131,800 obituaries currently on file at Headquarters in
 Lincoln. Additional obituaries from the Central California Chapter library in Fresno will soon be added.

 The obituary database is indexed by keywords such as surnames, given names,
 and locations of events like birth and death, plus significant dates of birth, marriage, immigration and death.

 Obituary records are available for persons from various German
 Russian regions including Bessarabia, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Poland,
 Ukraine, Volga and Volhynia. Obituaries are from newspapers in states with
 large German Russian populations such as Washington, Oregon, California,
 Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,
 Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin and Michigan and countries such as
 Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Canada.

 Other databases such as scrapbooks, cemetery records and
 numerous historical records from the North Colorado Chapter library are
 being processed for future new database releases. Items will such as the
 AHSGR Workpapers and the first 20 years of the AHSGR Journal are 
 additional candidates for the on-line materials. New database candidates are readily
 identified and their availability is limited only by the volunteer support necessary to prepare the data for use by the project.

 Over the past five years or so, volunteers have spent thousands
 of hours, planning, scanning, indexing and preparing valuable genealogical
 resources for online use. Special appreciation goes to the coordinators of
 the project: Marge and Bob Benson, Ken Leffler and Ron Greenwald, as well 
 as to the many dedicated volunteers across the country who have helped and
 continue to help with indexing, translating and revising. Recognition and
 appreciation also goes to the chapters and councils providing funding to the
 project (California District Council and the Denver Metro, Northern 
 Colorado and Lincoln Chapters) and to the many AHSGR members for their special
 donations to SOAR.

 Dennis Zitterkopf