The Hungarian language newspaper Új Magyar Szó reports about the digitization underway in Timisoara's county library.

Several of the Romanian language old newspapers of the Banat region have been scanned and further titles are planned, including the Hungarian language Délmagyarországi Közlöny (1872-1918).

The internet page of the digitized materials is nothing more than directories with links to the downloadable years of Drapelul de Lugoj (old Hungary's Lugos) and Luminatorul (Timisoara's leading Romanian newspaper at the turn of the 19-20th c.). The files in the PDf format are huge (several years go beyond 1 GB). The library will probably consider the development of the digital library interface so that it could be more user-friendly: Timis County Library Digital Library - click on periodice for the historical newspapers.

Browsing through the Forum.hr site's topics covering history I came across a thread where one of the forum members started to share his collection of 1:75,000 old military maps covering Croatia from the time of Austria-Hungary (early 20th century). If that's not enough, post #221 has a link to a huge collection of topo maps of former Yugoslav republics. The scale for the maps vary. For Croatia the site has 1:25,000 ones (grid), just like for Slovenia (grid), Serbia is covered by both 1:50,000 and 1:100,000. There is also a section for Crna Gora (Montenegro). These maps were made in the 1970s.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the appearance of three web2.0 applications made especially for family history buffs (MyHeritage.hu, Oseim.hu, Csaladfalu.hu). Now I received a kind notice about the availability of yet another one. The people running the web2.0 generation Ittvoltam.hu (IWasHere.hu) enriching their service has just added the Családfa (Family Tree) feature. It allows users to create and display family trees and family events, to send messages, to use the family calendar etc. One unique feature of this site amongst the genealogy networking sites in Hungary is the ability to up- and download (import/export) GEDCOM and XML files.

With this abundance of sites (see Randy's list for the English language ones) it gets harder to decide where one would settle. And then, will these sites talk to each other? Will there be a search engine that could query all of them?

A search for keywords Hungary genealogy on Google Blog Search brought up an interesting blog item. Apparently written by a member of LDS this article gives some insights into how Mormons found the way to the Soviet block: The Iron Curtain: Thomas S. Monson Helped Pull It Down. Extract:
"One of the most effective of the Lords ambassadors was the Churchs microfilming work. In 1957, Hungary approached the Genealogical Department (now the Family History Department) regarding the preservation of its records."

The Hungarian National Archives kindly responded to my email asking about the status of the digitization of the 1828 census of Hungary. According to their information the launch of the service is expected for the Summer of 2009, at earliest. The processing of the 1720 census is more advanced.

Schelly's post on her Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog about Steve Morse's NYC April lecture about the Jewish calendar was an impetus to remind me to post about a great resource that has been on the virtual shelf of the Hungarian Electronic Library since Nov 2007.

Although originally published in 1912 (and revised in 1940), Prof. Szentpétery's Chronologia and Calendar of Diplomatics most of the knowledge and tools they provide still prove to be useful for those digging deep into the history of Hungary or that of families. Mind you, these handbooks are written in Hungarian.

Two of the most common situations a genealogist doing research in Christian sources may want to consult an authority on chronology: 1) to resolve what all those dates referring to church holidays are, 2) the obscurity in the use of the Gregorian (New) calendar and the Julian (Old) calendar.

For 1) you might want to look up the date in the list of Christian feast day starting on page 39. This is a multi-lingual collection, including names in Latin, Hungarian and German. Starting on page 51 there is a collection of special holy days named in old documents in Hungary going through the church year cycle starting in January.

Old documents, charters written in Latin in Hungary often provide the dates in their relation to the closest Sunday (Dominica in Latin), like feria secunda post Dominicam Palmarum - it translates to the second day (Monday that is) of the week after Palm Sunday in English. Then the question comes, given that Palm Sunday is calculated in its relation to the moving day of Easter, what day Palm Sunday was that year. To answer this you could use any of the perpetual calendars available on the web or use the charts in Szentpétery's work covering years 750 through 2059, A.D. For this latter look up the year you are interested in on pages 86-93 of the pdf file, then go the chart number (pages 16-85) found next to the year.

If you are into Islamic or Jewish dates, there are guides for you, too in Szentpétery's Handbook of chronology. The introduction to the Islamic calendar starts on page 33 of the pdf file, and that of the Jewish calendar can be found on pages 35-39.

The 1828 census of Hungary has been a tempting piece in WVR's World Collection since its appearance in early Feb 2008. The price was a bit high, though. (David Lifferth explains pricing.) There have been several offers that have allowed those interested to buy the yearly membership at discounted prices.

Yesterday I blogged about the expected opening of the Hungarian National Archives' version of the 1828 census. I believe it would include all the counties covered in the census - Martha Remer Connor's indexes, i. e. the WVR database offers 25 counties.

Going to WorldVitalRecord's site today I realized that similarly to their US Collection, they now started selling monthly subscriptions to the World Collection, too. Now that's affordable! The price for the monthly subscription is set to $14.95.

I think it is the time to get my affiliate account active and start plugging for WorldVitalRecords.com.

If you can't wait for the Hungarian National Archives service, have a research brickwall in the area of those 20 counties in the first half of the 19th century, don't mind the UK census and all other databases coming with the subscription, then you might consider to buy the monthly subscription for $14.95 (recurring until cancellation).

And should you proceed and should you wish me to get a 20% commission of your purchase, please follow this link. If you'd rather go without a commission for me, please follow this link.

To see whether there is something I could grab for RadixHub from the websites of archives in Serbia I took a short trip to them. A spin-off of this virtual travel is this entry on RadixLog.

In Nov 2007 the National Archives of Serbia signed an agreement with the Pravoslav (Greek Orthodox) Church of Serbia to help the preservation (salvage) of church-owned archivalia.

Two kilometres of old papers waited for their saviour in the bell tower of the St. Mark's Church in Belgrade. When the archivists of the Serbian National Archives arrived in Jan 2008 the condition of the papers was already miserable - their refuge housing lasted for 17 years. Now the caring hands clean, dehydrate, disinfect, pack and process further the documents and books. This material includes church metrical registers amongst other valuable archivalia.

Prof. Gecsényi, general director of the Hungarian National Archives has an updated lectori salutem on the homepage of the repository. He describes the archives' efforts to become a more service and patron oriented institution.

2007 already brought a number PR boosting events organized and hosted by the archives, like the History in hands reach in November (see a nice video on YouTube), the Days of Cultural Heritage programs, including a historical playground for children. And for 2008 there is a coming competition for the kids on the May Day of Museums.

Talking about the digitization planned and under way the director mentions that online access to Hungary's 1720 and 1828 national censii is being prepared.

It was some weeks ago that WorldVitalRecords.com opened its World Collection with the index to 25 counties of the 1828 census.

It is so rewarding to read (or at least to keep track of) blogs in the virtual topical neighborhood. (Hint, hint: the links section on the right now sports my former Austria-Hungary genealogy blog roll.)

This is how I found a maps resource that was unknown to me. Lisa in her Take a trip back in time post mentioned the 1880 atlas by Hatsek to be available. She came to know it after reading Juliana (Szucs) Smith's Using Ancestry: Surprises in Great-grandpa’s Naturalization post on Ancestry.com's 24/7 Family History Circle blog.

These maps of Hungary's counties in 1880 available on the maproom.org site were published by Ignácz Hátsek.

The Hatsek atlas is not the only atlas available online. Besides the county maps from the Pallas lexicon there are Gönczy maps, early 1900s, the Görög maps, early 1800s, and the 1800 Atlas Regni Hungariae.

Pamela W. of the Jewish Genealogical Society of LA sent a kind invitation to their upcoming meeting on Apr 13 to the H-SIG @ JewishGen. The event is going to include two episodes of BBC's popular Who Do You Think You Are? show. One of them features Britain's celeb actor, writer and host Stephen Fry. "Stephen Fry seems as English as tweed, silver toast racks and the London black cab he can be seen driving around the streets of the capital." On the maternal side Stephen's roots (the Neumann/Newman family) go back to the Jewish community of (Nagy)Surany in the former Nyitra County of Hungary, now Suran in Slovakia.

I've just checked HipCat's extensive catalog of famous Hungarians to see if Stephen Fry is included. He is not.