The Radziwiłł archives, estates and 50,000 checked titles
| Total | This week | |
|---|---|---|
| Files in the catalogue | 322,910 | +6,782 |
| open to everyone | 272,398 | +4,992 |
| in early access | 50,512 | +1,790 |
This week's new files are in early access: 5,779 from the publication of the Radziwiłł archives and another 1,002 files of NIAB in Minsk and Grodno. Files in early access are visible on the Researcher plan.
Today we opened to everyone 4,991 files of NIAB in Grodno that were in early access: 34 inventories of 18 fonds (fonds 24–98). The rest of early access opens over the coming month.
We keep checking the titles of NIAB files against the scans of the inventories. This week the titles of over 50,000 files were checked and refined, 64,868 in all so far.
What's new on the site
The Radziwiłł archives. Besides NIAB's, the catalogue now has files from foreign archives that concern the territory of present-day Belarus: 852 from the Lithuanian State Historical Archives, 675 from the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw and 24 from the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Kyiv. The source is given on each file's page.
Estates. The new Estates section lists 3,527 estates named in file titles. Each shows its owners (as the files word them), the estate's villages and all its files by kind of document.
Search within an inventory. On an inventory's page you can search the titles, narrow the files by year, kind of document and status, and jump straight to a file by its number. The search forgives misspelt words.
Belarusian queries. The main search and the inventory search now find Russian titles from a query in Belarusian: «Ліда» finds «Лида», «Брэст» finds «Брест», «Радзівіл» finds «Радзивилл».
Places. The gazetteer now has 40,563 places: named tracts and vanished villages from OpenStreetMap, GeoNames and NGA have joined the villages from Wikidata. A village's page shows its affiliation by year from printed sources: the 1906 «Список населенных мест Витебской губернии» (2,696 villages), the 1879 «Описание церквей и приходов Минской епархии» (Novogrudok uezd) and the list of the Novogrudok uezd estates in E. Pawłowicz's memoirs (1887). It also shows the village council and its fond in the archives (where the household books are) and old maps. A search by place also finds the metric books of the church of its parish.
Files the archive does not issue. 262 NIAB files are marked “Not issued” from the volunteers' table of refusals, with the reason and the date of the archive's answer. If such a file is in your saved search or collection, you will get a letter about it.
Telegram. The site's news now also appears in its Telegram channel.