The Skorowidz is Online! [1]

The “Skorowidz” is my favorite Polish Gazetteer. When I am at the FHC or FHL the Skorowidz is the first gazetteer I look at to find the Parish for the village I am researching. The Skorowidz with its columnar format and the last column identifying the parish for each village gets me the information I need quickly. I have even memorized the FHL film # 1,343,868 and know which drawer it’s in at the LARFHC. It has upward of 100,000 place names so it’s a good place to look for that village that you could not locate elsewhere.

The columns are shown below

           

Terytorjanie wlasciwe wldze I urzedy oraz urzadzenia komunikacyjne

Miejscowosc i jej charakter 

Gmina 

Powiat polityczny 

Wojewodztwo 

Poczta I telegraf (telefon) 

Stacja kolej. z odlegloscia km. 

Najblizsza linja komunik. Autobus. z odlegloscia km. 

SAD

Urzedy Parafjalne 

Grodzki

Okregowy

            

Administrative jurisdictions and transit facilities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Court

 

Locality and its Character

Township

Political District

Province

Post Office & telegraph (telephone)

Rail Station with distance in kilometers

Nearest Bus Stop with distance in kilometers

Local

Regional

Parish Offices (of various religions)

 

Libraries have begun digitizing their information. The FHL (Family History Library) is in the process of digitizing its records. Google[2] announced an agreement with libraries such as Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, New York Public Library, and Oxford to digitize their holdings. America is not the only country in this effort. In Poland, the Digital Library of Wielkopolska has lead in this effort. Their website: http://www2.bg.am.poznan.pl/inne/wbc.php contains over 5800 documents and gives access to some of the oldest Polish writing relics. You have access to scientific documents and monographs as well as to exhibitions with unique resources from various Wielkopolska libraries. A search window allows searches by title, author, publisher, or simply view an alphabetic list.

I entered “Skorowidz miejscowosci” in the search window and it came up with a number of entries that included “Skorowidz miejscowości Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z oznaczeniem terytorjalnie im właściwych władz i urzędów oraz urządzeń komunikacyjnych”; “Index of Place names of the Republic of Poland with corresponding governmental agencies and offices, including communication facilities”, Editor Bystrzycki, Tadeusz (opracz.) Publisher: Przemyśl: Warszawa; Wydawnictwo Książnicy Naukowej, Date 1933.

The document can be downloaded in zip format or viewed directly from the site. To view it you need the DjVu browser plug-in installed in Internet Explorer (it is possible to install it in other browsers). This can be downloaded free from Lizard Tech and is easy to do. The browser comes with standard features to scroll pages, enlarge, skip to next or previous page or just go to a numbered page. Searching for a village means jumping around, guessing at a page number then jumping forward or back to find the right page. Sorry, you can’t just enter the village name and have the page pop up. You have to do a little work but it is well worth it to have this resource on line.

The site is hosted by the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, Noskowskiego St 12/14, 61-704 Poznan, Poland and operated by the Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries, Powstancow Wielkopolskich St 16, 61-895 Poznan, Poland. Ω  PRL, Editor


[1]  This came to my attention by an item in Biuletyn Korzenie, Vol. 16, No.2, October 2005 from PGS of Massachusetts. Thanks PGS-MA

[2]  “Google is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database”, by John Markoff and Edward Wyatt, New York Times, December 14, 2004