While in Salt Lake City in March for an IAJGS Board Meeting, of course I
made some time to spend in the Genealogical Library and encountered a
terrific new search tool. An upgraded version of the Family History
Library Catalog is available on various computers throughout the Library.
It provides much more powerful search capabilities than the version
currently available at the branch libraries or at www.familysearch.com.

The version available at the Library provides for Title, Subject, and
Keyword searches, along with the familiar Surname, Location and Author
searches. I entered "Canada" and "Jewish" as keywords and found that
considerable indexes have been made of available Canadian censuses for
Jewish persons. Since the Canadian censuses are not indexed overall, this
is an outstanding resource for those of us doing Canadian research (such as
my search for Bookbinders in Winnipeg and Barenbergs in Toronto).

What is especially exciting is being able to immediately get the materials
cited in the Catalog - a unique experience only to be had in Salt Lake
City. Unfortunately, my Bookbinders and Barenbergs arrived in Canada after
1910 (the most recently released Canadian Census). So, I will have to keep
on looking. However, if your family got to Canada prior to 1910, the
Canadian Censuses, especially with the Jewish indices, can be a great
resource.

Convenient access to all available US and Canadian Censuses, and a far more
powerful computerized version of the catalog are yet two more reasons to
join your fellow Jewish Genealogists at the 20th Annual
International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (http://www.iajgs.org/slcy2k)
this coming July.

See you there!
Hal Bookbinder
IAJGS Vice President &
Conference Syllabus Chair