The JewishGen ShtetlSeeker is now the JewishGen Gazetteer

On August 16th, at the recent IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy, Warren Blatt announced that the «JewishGen ShtetlSeeker» was being renamed to become the «JewishGen Gazetteer.» This name was chosen to more accurately reflect the contents of the database.

The JewishGen Gazetteer is based upon data from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, and contains the names of one million localities from 54 countries throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Along with the name change, a number of significant improvements have been made:

1. The geographic scope has been expanded to include:

•         a. Scandinavia: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
•         b. Iberia: Spain and Portugal.
•         c. Luxembourg.
•         d. Kyrgyzstan (the only former Soviet Republic not previously included).
•         e. Yemen.

2. Improved Search Functionality:

•         a. Names in non-Latin alphabets (such as Arabic and Cyrillic) are now displayed (this is extremely useful when trying to locate towns based upon old documents).
•         b. «Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching,» a more advanced and accurate form of Soundex coding, has been implemented.
•         c. Search results are now displayed in order of relevance, with the most likely matches appearing first.

The JewishGen Gazetteer has helped thousands of people identify the places where their ancestors lived. The new name of the database, along with the technical improvements, will enable JewishGen to continue helping amateur and professional genealogists as they research their Jewish family history and heritage.

The database can be accessed by visiting <http://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/LocTown.asp>.

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