Archives Acquisition (AA) Committee

Ukrainian Archives During the past several months, we have experienced a major slow down in our records retrieval efforts in obtaining records from the Odessa State Archives and the Nikolaev Archives.

In April 2004 we were able to start a relationship with the archives in Nikolaev. This project called for us to provide funds for digital equipment in support of the archives so they could use a digital camera to make pictures of documents. The deal that was consummated was a sweetheart deal that has delivered many dozens of CDs filled with pictures of very important records at a very minimal cost for GRHS.

Most of what we have received from Nikolaev relates to the Beresan District Odessa (BDO) villages between the years 1899 and about 1922. We have also received a few records for the Grossliebental District Odessa, and significant records for the Crimea and Taurien areas. We have gained copies of annual St Petersburg reports from 1899 to 1916, and some Land Owner records for 1922 (BDO).

There are some very large rooms of records still unsearched at this archive, and we could hear at any time that they have found more "German" records.

The Mormons (LDS) currently have four filming contracts in the Ukrainian/ South Russian archives we are interested in. These films are now starting to arrive in Salt Lake City for cataloging. It will take a period of two to three years at a minimum before they will be available to the public.

The building conditions at the State Archives in the city of Odessa remains a huge problem for us, as the building is considered too unsafe to allow significant access to the records. A year ago, things were to be "fixed" enough so we could start gaining copies of materials again. While we are still able to get some records from there, it is much slower than we are used to. At last report, the LDS had not been able to start their filming contract there yet either - most likely because of the building conditions.

In December 2005, we received a catalog of censuses (in Cyrillic) that the LDS have filmed in the Bessarabian area. We know some of these censuses are not of our German villages. We have spent most of the last year going over this list of approximately 850 censuses to try to determine which are of interest for our German research.

While the LDS contracts are underway, we will maintain a low profile so we don't interfere with their efforts in these four archives. But we have to be prepared - when this data becomes available to us, there will be huge amounts of indexing to be done so our members can find the data useful to their research. So we must use this time to prepare our Cyrillic skills and prepare our plans for indexing projects.

The language mix of these records is difficult to predict. We do know from prior experience that the earlier years Welfare Committee Records are usually a projects. The potential for this function is much greater than most of us understand.

The activities of the GRHS Clearing House are centered around adding research materials to our GRHS and RIG webpages. A significant amount of the energy invested in these projects is to build indexes that can be used by Black Sea German Russian researchers as an aid in finding their records. Many of these items are being placed in members-only areas on our GRHS and RIG webpages.

We are always looking for more volunteers to help with these great efforts.