I have just ordered my first film from LDS. This one is for church records from Jablonov nad Turnou. I am searching for information on my grandfather. This may not be the right film but I am using a process of elimination in determing the correct village (old "Almas" vs 2 or 3 possibilities today). I have kept the translation guides provided by helpful listers and am sure they will come in handy as I don't read Hungarian or Latin. Any other useful tips to consider for going through an LDS film would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Bill Smorey/Cmorej/Czmorej

Good question. I spent three years looking over about 100 different films, sometimes again and again. 1. Do an initial scan of the entire film(s) to see what you've got. That will give you an idea of how to manage the work. Generally speaking, it will either be in paragraph form (each entry is just added to the end of the next, as if it was a very long sentence), or in a column form. Columns are far superior for scanning, when looking for names, your eye can just look straight down the column. My churchbooks contain both. I wanted to "cherry pick" first, so I went for the columns. 2. Search the entire films. Information is not necessarily in chronological order. Occassionally some pages will be out of order. 3. Bring $20 and plan to make copies of important or interesting pages. A couple of hours is never nearly enough time to study them. Especially copy pages that are hard to read, to figure out later. 4. Determine your strategy: are you looking for an overview? Build a family tree? Find everyone with your surname? Each objective begets a different strategy. 5. Time is always your enemy at the FHC. Too many people, not enough viewers, too little time. Figure out how to make best use of your time quickly. 6. Select the correct film reader. Some have more powerful lenses than others, showing the image larger, but also causing you to move around the page more often. Lesser magnification allows you to see the entire page at once, which is helpful when skimming for names. 7. Determine the language of the records. It probably will change over time. I have records written in Cyrillic script and Magyar (Hungarian). Hungarian is easy. A surname is a surname. My Tarkulic' is Tarkulics in Magyar. As a general rule, take any z's the Magyars put in, throw them out, and you've probably got the name. Nicholas could be Mikloz or Miklos. 8. Cyrillic is most difficult. I saved that till last. This was the font used primarily for church Slavonic (see below). I had about 100 year of records. What I did was to write out my surname in Cyrillic on a 3x5 index card and keep it next to the reader. It took a number of hours, but after a while I began to recognize my surname in cyrillic. Church Slavonic alphabet: http://www.orthodoxepubsoc.org/alphabetprint.htm 9. Keep a logbook of your activities. This will help you from wasting time re-reading pages. Use it to log the date, pages read and any other info useful. I also used it to note issues that occurred during the viewing that needed further investigation. I noted a "TARKO" surname and wanted to come back to it later to see if it was related (it was not.) Any questions that occur to you along the way. Etc. etc. You will find that you will be very quickly overwhelmed with data, so managing it resourcefully will make you more productive. 10. Manage your copy time. Invariably, you'll have to move the film to a film printing machine. Rather than doing it one at a time, mark each image with a little plastic, removable post-it pointer tab (go to Staples). 11. . If you have a film you want to keep for an extended length, after you've renewed it once, you can pay a fee of approx $7 which will hold it at your FHL indefinitely. Nothing worse than going back on day 31 and finding out your film has been returned to Salt Lake. 12. Don't be intimidated by other languages. Names are names, numbers(dates, ages) are obvious. Just make sure you know that translations for the 12 months of the year. 13. Marriage records usually show bride, groom, date, ages, parents, sponsors, place of birth. 14. Birth records usually show date of birth, date of baptism, name, parents, sponsors, sometimes a note indicating date of death and place. 15. Death records usually include date of death, date of burial(sometimes), name, surviving relative, oft times cause of death. 16. Don't expect the staff to be of much help. It's a library that covers the world. Unless the staff member has personally researched your area, you'll be mostly on your own. Good luck, Bill Tarkulich -----Original Message----- From: wasmore@att.net [mailto:wasmore@att.net] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 12:10 PM To: SLOVAKIA-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Research Tips - LDS I have just ordered my first film from LDS. This one is for church records from Jablonov nad Turnou. I am searching for information on my grandfather. This may not be the right film but I am using a process of elimination in determing the correct village (old "Almas" vs 2 or 3 possibilities today). I have kept the translation guides provided by helpful listers and am sure they will come in handy as I don't read Hungarian or Latin. Any other useful tips to consider for going through an LDS film would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Bill Smorey/Cmorej/Czmorej ============================== To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237