How to find addresses in old Gdansk/Danzig

The Pomorska Biblioteka Cyfrowa (Pomeranian Digital Library) has digitized (DjVu format) German-language address directories (like phone books but mostly without phone numbers) for Gdansk and environs up to 1942. This is fantastic.

How to find and use these books:

1. Install some DjVu software if you haven’t already. These books are in DjVu format. See http://djvu.org/resources/
2. Go to http://pbc.gda.pl/dlibra/
3. Click the British flag to select an English interface. Some interface things are still not translated, but clicking the flag will help. 
4. Search for Książki adresowe to list all of them or search for Książki adresowe yyyy where “yyyy” is a specific year for which you’re hoping to find a directory. “Szukaj” is the “Search” button.
   
   Shortcut: you can search for a person's name in this search box and find all address books with a match, but this depends on reliable OCR; OCR usually is not 100 percent reliable, so I would still go and look up your names manually as described below.
5. In the search results, hover your mouse pointer over a title to see the full title. These books are in German, but you just need to read the date. 
6. Click a title to display a book summary. 
7. On the book summary page, copy and paste all of the book summary to your own records. If you’re going to use the book as a source, you need that information. 
8. Click the book image to open the book in your DjVu software. 
9. Use the page number selector to change the displayed page. 
10. I'm not sure about earlier editions yet, but at least from 1928 to 1942, volume one (“I. Tiel” at the top of the page) is sorted by last name and volume two (“II. Tiel” at the top of the page) is sorted by street name and address.
    Browse volume one by last name to find people you’re interested in. Each entry lists the person's profession and address. If you don't know German, you'll need a cheat sheet to read the professions.
    Browse volume two by street name and address number if you’re doing a building history, or if you want to see who else lived near the person you’re interested in. 
11. When you find something, do a screen print to get an image of the page that you can include in your documents. You can also click T to display the results in plain text for reading and copying, but be careful to compare the text to the image; OCR makes mistakes.
12. Be sure to note both the electronic page number displayed in the DjVu viewer and the print page number as it appears on the page image. In combination with the book summary information, this will give you full source information.

How to find graves in Poland

Some grave finders online for Polish cemeteries:

• Warsaw
• Krakow
• Łódź - still looking for one
• Wroclaw
• Poznan
• Gdansk
• Szczecin
• Bydgoszcz - still looking for one
• Lublin - still looking for one
• Katowice
• Białystok - still looking for one
• Gdynia
• Częstochowa - still looking for one
• Radom - still looking for one
• Sosnowiec - still looking for one
• Toruń - still looking for one
• Kielce

If any of these links fail to take you to an online search form, let me know. Things change.

Also try this page and select a city from the right column. It is very hit and miss from what I've seen. For one city it gave great results, but for another city it turned up nothing.

To Google for other sites like this, try searching for something like:
wyszukiwarka nagrobków cityname

Tips:

• Szukaj = Search (the button to start the search)
• Nazwisko = last name
• Imię = first name
• Data urodzenia = date of birth
  Most full dates are entered in rrrr-mm-dd format ("r" = "rok" = "y" = "year")
• Data lub rok urodzenia = date (full) or year of birth
• Data zgonu = date of death
• Data lub rok zgonu = date (full) or year of death
• Data pochowania = date of burial
• Zaznacz jeśli wprowadziłeś całe nazwisko = Select the check box if you have entered the entire name. If you clear this check box, you can enter a partial name such as "Kowal" to match "Kowal" and "Kowalski" and "Kowalczyk" and so on. Use "Kowalsk" to match "Kowalski" (male form of the name) and "Kowalska" (female form of the name).
• Zaznacz by wprowadzić datę urodzenia = Select the check box to enter the date of birth
• Data urodzenia OD [date] DO date = Date of birth FROM [date] TO [date] (so you can specify a date range for birth date)
• Data zgonu OD [date] DO date = Date of death FROM [date] TO [date] (so you can specify a date range for death date)
• Zaznacz by wprowadzić datę zgonu = Select the check box to enter the date of death
• Rok zgonu (przedział maks. 20 lat) = Year of death (range up to 20 years)
• Cmentarz = Cemetery
• Nr kwatery = Number of the quarter (section) of the cemetery
• Rząd = Row
• Nr grobu: = Number of the grave
• Data urodzenia = Date of birth
• Data zgonu = Date of death
• Data pochówku = Date of burial

What you won't find (in Gdansk, anyway): many Germans or Jews. After the war, their graves were allowed to disintegrate or were actively destroyed. Many entire cemeteries are now just parks with no markers other than a single stone explaining that this park used to be a cemetery.

Starting Out

I need a place to keep my notes about Polish genealogy and local history, and I might as well publish them for others to use, add to, and fix.

The first few posts probably will be particularly bad. I need to figure out Blogger and Blogspot.