Organization

• Reuben Drefs will serve as the general coordinator and all questions and communication will normally be addressed to Reuben.

  Address: 2053 Woonsocket, Toledo Ohio 43615

  Email:

• Tom Stangl will serve as the oversight person, somewhat as a consultant to evolving questions and decisions that may occur. Tom may assist in a general way but not be involved in the week by week and month by month activity.

• Marty McMahon will serve as the editor of the project, essentially reviewing the data and editing it for Internet posting. Marty's E-mail is:

• Roger Ehrich will serve as our link with LDS and post the data on Odessa.

Technical Guidelines for Extractors

1. All extractors must use the project template for births, marriages and deaths. Any deviation from the template cannot be used for posting on Odessa. The templates for Births, Marriages, and Deaths contain the following columns:

   Births: Last Name First Name D/M Year Place Father (first name only) Mother (last, first names) Film/It Page Reg. No. Remarks

   Marriages: D/M Year Groom-Last Groom-First Groom-Birthplace Bride-Last Bride-First Bride-Birthplace Place of Marriage Film/It Page Reg. No. Remarks

   Deaths: Last Name First Name D/M Year Place of Death Father (first name only) Mother (last, first names) Film/It Page Reg. No. Place of Birth Age at Death Remarks

   A. Umlauts will be indicated by the use of the tilde key on the upper left of computer keyboards. Umlauted names should be typed as per this example:

   Ä = ~A

   ä = ~a

   ö = ~o

   Ö = ~O

   ü = ~u, e.g. J~ungling, but not Juengling or Jüngling

   Ü = ~U

   ÿ = y, but not ~y

   B. Other German script letters will use the following:

   ß = ss

   tz = tz

   C. Date format

   For indicating an age:

   40y11m20d e.g. in a death record in the remarks column

   Dates are to be typed in the following manner:

   01 Jun 1755

   Jun 1755

   1755

   but not

   04 1785 or

   04 17?5

   Notes: The days one through nine always have a "0" added in front so date sorting works right and only 3 letters are used for the month. And there is a space between the number of the day and the month and the year. If the month is unknown, the day is not helpful for specifying the date.

   By default, EXCEL will change dates like 03 Jan into 3-Jan. To fix this, a date column should be formatted as "text". Our EXCEL template files are already set up this way.

   At times the day of the event may be missing and one can only submit the month and year and sometimes only the year. The year column is a separate column, so extractors only need to be concerned with placing 10 Jun in the D/M column and the year in the year column. The editor will merge these in the editing phase of the project.

   D. Abbreviations: We recommend the use of a set of standard abbreviations, most of which will be used in the Remarks column. These include:

   M = Mother

   F = Father

   SP = Spouse

   GF = Groom's father

   BF = Bride's father

   GM = Groom's mother

   BM = Bride's mother

2. Software: Our recommended software is Excel. However, compatible software may be used if an extractor does not own Excel. Excel has many advantages including handling large databases. It also assists in the typing process through its internal memory of previously typed letters. Extractors please check with coordinator and/or editor regarding software other than Excel before beginning work on this project.

3. Film assignments: Our general objective is to work on films of Danzig proper, Danziger Niederung (lowlands), Danziger Höhe (heights), with a perspective that Elbing and Dirschau would be a future focus as well as other areas of the Vistula river, if sufficient volunteers commit to this project.

   The coordinator will assign films in an alphabetical order within each district unless an extractor has a preference for working on a particular church record. Flexibility can be practiced with an eye on completing all films in a district before moving into the next district.