A number of people have expressed interest in reviving the JewishGen based
Latvia SIG. 2 Past Presidents of the SIG, myself and Marion Werle will be
happy to assist. We are also delighted to have Bruce Dumes who designed the
LatviaSIG webpage agreeing to come back and act as webmaster and we have
already started making changes. We will be migrating the three Shtetl Focus
webpages for Riebini, Varaklani and Subate >from the SIG website into
KehilaLinks and the JewishGen Latvia SIG donation page has been revised to
reflect our new priorities. We are also considering using Social Media such
as Facebook or a Blog to encourage exchange of information on Latvia
research.

However the SIG cannot survive unless at least 4 people come forward and
agree to form a Committee to run the SIG and organise volunteers Anyone
interested in Latvia Research can come forward as we do not have an active
Membership list at present. The newly formed Committee would have a SIG
Coordinator, Membership Secretary, Database coordinator and website
coordinator.
One of the aims of the newly formed Committee would be to work out a
Membership plan.

Donations are needed to continue our database work, and Latvia Researchers
can indicate which area (Courland, Latgale or Vitebsk gubernias) they would
prefer to prioritize, or, alternatively, just donate to the general database
fund. A suggested first project would be to expand the 1897 All Russian
census database to include all household members, not just the adults. This
would require volunteers to come forward and under the direction of the
newly formed Committee to translate data. A knowledge of Russian,Cyrillic
and Excel would be necessary requirements. Jewishgen has a format that needs
to be followed when entering data into Excel for the Jewishgen Latvia
database.

We also ask volunteers to come forward and develop the Kehilalinks. You do
not need to know html as the pages are created with a very easy software
programme called Seamonkey which is WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) It
is free and you will get support >from the excellent team running the
Kehilalinks. Details of how to create a KehilaLinks site can be found at-

http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/documentation/writing.htm

Anyone who would like to be actively involved in the LatviaSIG please
contact either me
Arlene Beare agold13@...
or Marion Werle at canadagenes@...

Arlene Beare UK
On my mother's side >from Lithuania and then Latvia
Dorfman (born Birzai Lithuania and then lived in Riga)
Scher/Blum (born Pandelys Lithuania and then lived in Riga) Berman (born
Lygumai Lithuania and then lived in Jekabpils Latvia)

On my father's side >from Poland
Samuels - Benjamin and brother Joseph (wife Dora Dembinski) Poland possibly
Krakow and Zychlin