L Dor V Dor Foundation Inc

The L'Dor V'Dor Foundation's first project, Documentation of Jewish Records Worldwide (DoJR), will discover and inventory in JCat, the world's most comprehensive catalog of historic documents of Jewish lives, the 85% unknown records, often hidden-in-plain-sight and the majority not labeled Jewish. The catalog will be free to use.

Each discovery of our ancestors brings us closer to our Jewish past and lays a foundation for Jewish continuity.

Each life uncovered preserves our history, deepens our self-knowledge, and strengthens our Jewish identity.

Each life brought to light adds a link in the chain — building a personal and collective connection to our past.

In our pilot project, 116,000 lives were discovered in four short weeks. Country by country, we will continue to discover the documents of the Jewish diaspora — of our ancestors’ lives.

Our goals are to:
1. Conduct surveys in at least 30 countries simultaneously for the more than 350 historic record types.
2. Create computer interfaces to extract relevant information from existing catalogs and databases held by partner archives.
3. Crowdsource information from the researcher community.
4. Utilize Artificial Intelligence to survey and assess digital archives and automatically create catalog entries realizing more than 10,000 times improvement in time and cost to survey.

Using best-in-class development methods, tools, CRM, and standards.

Content for the catalog will be sourced using a variety of methods

New methods are being utilized to tackle what previously was an intractable problem. Methods for discovering relevant records in use for the past 40 years are increasingly inefficient and insufficient.

Technology advances in artificial intelligence (AI), named entity recognition (NER), natural language processing (NLP), big data architectures, archival description standards, and new business and social methods now can be applied to large scale projects in the search for Jewish records.

The DoJR’s systematic approach will result in an exponential increase in the number of records collections discovered.

Working within and partnering across the genealogical and archival communities will further advance our collective missions to make more records available faster and avoid unnecessary duplication of work.

We look in facilities such as archives, historical societies, libraries, and museums – Jewish and secular. We have identified 40 categories of Jewish organizations that potentially hold records of our ancestors such as synagogues, schools, federations, community centers, chevra kadisha, social welfare, and more. We look for individuals who may have come into possession of records such as yizkor plaques discarded by a shuttered synagogue. We filter online catalogues and databases for relevant digital files. And we will crowdsource information about record collections from individuals in the genealogy community.

Depth and breadth of global experience in: genealogy leadership, historic records management and processing, technology innovation, entrepreneurship, complex data systems, and volunteer management

Knowledge of genealogical research

Access to a community of committed genealogical and archival experts

Demonstrated ability to deliver large scale projects (due to global reach and availability of digital technology and artificial intelligence)

As we begin fundraising, we currently are operating as an all volunteer organization. There are more more than 40 volunteers and 9 partner organizations in 10 countries working on survey projects and related technology. We are currently training the Artificial Intelligence engine in 5 languages. We have identified more than 5000 historic record collections that document the lives of an estimated 830,000 individuals.