A JRI-Poland Project is a group endeavor to bring a searchable historical set of data to our users. The project may not have a discrete, calculated end because of the necessity and importance of gathering data step-by-step. The steps may be dictated by, for example: (1) limited funds; (2) delayed or restricted access to the archival material (due to Polish laws protecting personal data, archival work to repair records, or the archive’s plans to digitally photograph the source material); or (3) other barriers to physical access, such as construction schedules or temporary reading room closure.
When a JRI-Poland project is finally announced as completed and declared “fully funded,” the data then becomes eligible to be made publicly searchable through the JRI-Poland website. Such a project may later be expanded to include additional years or types of records as new data become available at the archives holding the records.
Each project Progress Bar (green thermometer) on the JRI-Poland Town or Project Explorer Card expresses the U.S. dollars currently raised towards the fundraising goal. That goal is expressed not in project stages but from the beginning of the first Town-related project. Currently, the revenue amount is reported from JRI-Poland’s financial system and updated to the JRI-Poland website monthly by our finance team.
There are three main types of JRI-Poland projects:
- Town-related projects refer to data sets created by JRI-Poland for specific locations for the Jewish community of a town:
- These may include civil records (births, marriages, and deaths), books of residents/census records, cemetery/burial, army, school or notarial records, ID or passport lists, and a variety of other types.
- Poland-wide projects include data for multiple areas or towns, perhaps all in the same region:
- These include area censuses, district army records, newspaper lists, and some of the same sources listed in Town-related projects that include data for multiple towns.
- External sources linked to or searchable from JRI-Poland:
- This may be data related to Town-related or Poland-wide sources that JRI-Poland did not assemble itself, but that may be accessed through searches on JRI-Poland, made available by JRI-Poland by agreement with another organization. Examples of External sources projects include Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony, cemetery information from the Foundation for the Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland, data from the POLIN Museum’s Virtual Shtetl Project, and Jewish Distribution Committee (JDC) lists.