In a tip of the month in 2004 we’ve drawn your attention to the print and CD-Rom edition of a geographic dictionary for the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavonic Countries (Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich). Meanwhile 15 volumes of the print edition are available online at the Polish Digital Library. Beyond that the Polish Genealogical Society und Hic Leones with the help of many volunteers work on translating and indexing this dictionary to German and English.
The transliteration of characters from non-Latin scripts differs from target language to target language and from purpose to purpose (literal/phonetic). The encoding of special characters that are used in these transliterations does as well.
The online-converter 2cyr.com now provides a tool for the automatic transliteration of languages written in Kyrillic to Latin script and vice versa. It is also possible to use an individually created transliteration for special needs.
For the lack of a common one-to-one encoding of characters within one transliteration system the machine-based conversion of bibliographic data is difficult. Nevertheless 2cyr.com is a useful instrument and with the help of a screen keyboard it is possible to make requests to Unicode-based library catalogues, bibliographical databases, search engines in general and paste the received information to the own reference management software.
individuelle Anpassung der Umschrift für jedes einzelne Zeichen
Current results in scientific research are particularly published and discussed in journals and anthologies.
Online catalogs of libraries very often do not contain bibliographical references to articles. The latter can be found in databases related to specific fields of research.
These databases mostly are not available online, but Litdok provided by the Herder-Institut Marburg is. Litdok contains bibliographical references to articles on the history of East Central Europe. A user interface
with the possibility to choose between ten languages and multilingual subject headings offer a comfortable search for literature in different languages.
The Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy offers reproductions of maps of the eastern regions that belong to Germany before 1918. Topograhic maps (1: 25 000,
1: 100 000) as well as general maps of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia (1: 300 000) can be purchased online.
The data base “historical place names” provides information about various different names of villages and cities in the past and about the affiliation of the settlements to administrative districts.
A shtetl (Yiddish: שטעטל) was typically a small town or village with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe. ShtetlSeeker is an online
feature hosted by the Jewish Gen Web site locating settlements in 31 countrys that are currently located in this region. It covers linguistic and historic variants for names. It is also possible to search by latitude and longitude to locate towns in close proximity and to display maps using links to MapQuest, Expedia, or MultiMap.
