Avotaynu has just made a major update to its Consolidated Jewish
Surname Index located at http://www.avotaynu.com/csi/csi-home.html.
We have added the surnames contained in the following databases:
Jewish Records Indexing - Poland
All-Lithuania Database
All-Belarus Database
All-Latvia Database
JewishGen Family Finder

CJSI is a database of databases. It is an index to 31 different
sources of information about (mostly) Jewish surnames. Rather than
searching the indexes for each source separately to see if there is
information relevant to your research, CJSI indicates which
databases contain surnames of interest to you. Links are provided
to other Web sites that either have the databases or information
about how to access the data. Most of the sources that are not
online are published in books or on microfiche. In combination, all
31 sources represent more than 2 million records for approximately
370,000 unique surnames.

CJSI has some special features to enhance it usefulness. The index
is presented in Daitch-Mokotoff soundex order rather than
alphabetically. This means that many spelling variants of a surname
appear on consecutive lines. CJSI is browseable like a telephone
book. It does not merely provide you with a list of surnames that
match the soundex code. Keying in a given surname places you at a
certain point in the database. You can then search up and down the
database beyond the limits of the soundex code. This allows you
also to review surnames that are small variations of the one being
searched. Finally, an advanced search feature allows you to mix
exact matching and soundexing of the letters of the surname
lowering the incidence of false positives (the procedure is
described at the Internet site).

Because these newly added sources are ever growing, Avotaynu plans
to update CJSI at least semi-annually to include the additions that
have been made to these databases.

Gary Mokotoff