Last week’s November meeting offered newcomers to Polish genealogy an excellent introduction to Geneteka, the widely used database of Polish vital records. Our speaker, Kasia Dane, is a long-time genealogical and family researcher who has indexed roughly half a million records for Geneteka and FamilySearch.

Kasia’s thorough presentation covered the history and development of Geneteka, how to access the site, and how to select a province or parish for searching. She demonstrated options for translating the interface into English and explained how to set up effective searches by adding parameters such as a second surname or a range of years to refine results. She also reviewed sample birth, marriage, and death results, highlighting the types of information indexers can extract from original records.

Attendees shared enthusiastic feedback, including:

“I’ve used Geneteka, but learned a few more ways of navigating the site.”

“I did not realize that there were ancillary records in Geneteka.”

“Kasia, great presentation! Your knowledge is amazing. Liked detail you gave during presentation in searching. There was a lot, but you covered a lot. Liked handouts given beforehand.”

“Detailed explanation given of what and where to look.”

“Understanding records is difficult, and she explained a lot.”

The recording is now available on our Meeting Recordings page for members to access.