ItalianGen receives IAJGS Stern Grant

The Italian Genealogical Group (Italiangen.org) was awarded the 2008 Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Grant from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Associations (IAJGS) at the Chicago 2008 conference in August.

IGG will use the $2,500 grant to create an online Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930.
IGG provides free public access to online databases it creates from print and card indexes to 19th- and 20th-century birth, marriage, and death records and naturalization records for New York City’s five boroughs (Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Richmond, Manhattan), Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties, and some northern New York State counties. Every name listed in the print and card indexes is included in the databases.

The group was nominated for the annual grant by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island.

According to IAJGS, “The grant will make it possible for the IGG to create and computerize a Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930 from original records on 268 rolls of film from the Family History Library. There is currently no such index available for this period of massive Jewish immigration.

The Jewish genealogy community has greatly benefited from the 12 million records computerized by earlier IGG projects, and it is most appropriate to support the 1910-1930 Brooklyn Brides project, one that will surely allow many researchers to identify the descendants of female relatives who have to date been untraceable.” This marks the first time that the IGG will create a database from the records themselves rather than from an existing index.

More than 500 volunteers from local genealogy groups - and individuals in Canada, Ireland, and England who learned about the IGG’s projects through the Internet - compile the databases under the leadership and supervision of the IGG’s Project Coordinator John Martino. The IGG first participated in an indexing project in 1999 when it partnered with New York City’s Jewish Genealogical Society to create a database of Kings County (Brooklyn, New York) naturalizations.

Rabbi Malcolm Henry Stern (1915-1994) is widely considered to be “the dean of American Jewish genealogy,” and the grant honors his efforts to increase the availability of resources for Jewish genealogical research. It encourages institutions to pursue projects, activities, and acquisitions that provide new or enhanced resources to benefit Jewish genealogists.

IAJGS is the non-profit umbrella organization coordinating activities of more than 75 national and local JGSs around the world, and was formed in the 1980s. The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies is an independent, non-profit umbrella organization that coordinates the activities of more than 75 national and local Jewish genealogical societies around the world.

The Italian Genealogical Group, based in Long Island, New York, is dedicated to furthering Italian family history and genealogy. The databases it creates include every name listed in the indexes, without regard to nationality or religion. Volunteers from the IGG and other New York area genealogy organizations transcribe and index record collections held at local and regional archives.