Don't want to miss the opportunity to wish a Happy New Year to the readers of the blog.

Without looking into that crystal ball - I'm better in looking into the other direction in time - I have some ideas what this new year could bring to family historians. And without being comprehensive, if I may.

Hungarian Genealogists and local historians might find more and more fruits of the efforts of the government to digitize holdings in archives, libraries and museums. Besides initiatives (e.g. NDA - National Digital Archives (Hungary) set to digitize 3000 titles of Hungarian reference books) to be done centrally, various bodies and institutions receive funding to convert documents to digital content. My employer, the University of Pécs Library is working on its digital library, too. In a few weeks we would like to announce our opening. Interested parties will find local history items, gazetteers, directories in the collection.

Perhaps even more interesting will be the archival documents that might be seen on internet puter screens. And of primary interest are B/M/D records in Hungary.

The largest project that I'm aware of from this genre is the one to digitize Jewish church records of Budapest. I don't have exact details about this, have to do dig into it. Maybe the start of this service will coincide with the opening of the Budapest Holocaust Research Center and Museum set to open in April 2004.

The Baranya County Archives here in Pécs won partial funding to start converting B/M/D records from microfilm to digital. I hear that the Budapest City Archives considers doing it, too, or, work is already in progress.

Rumor has that B/M/D records in Romania (including Transylvania) have been microfilmed years ago. It is only now that their existence is confirmed by authorities. As Romania seeks membership in the European Union it is possible that their archives open their doors wider. The Mormons might make a breaktrough here.

And something from my own plans. I'd like to add the 1,000,000th record to the RadixIndex databases in early Feb. By this much improvements to the searching interfaces and facilities should be done and also, site should be prepared for institutional subscribers with IP-based access. This year will bring primary, archival sources and records to RadixIndex, too. Besides, I've been playing with the idea of inviting owners of scattered databases to contribute their resources to a subscription-based site for family historians.