We’re pleased to announce that the Association of Polish Professional Genealogists, together with the Polish Genealogical Society, is moving forward with finalizing the second phase of our agreement with the Tarnów Diocese.
Starting January 30, 2025, we’ll begin processing and making available scans of microfilms containing unique parish records. This is an enormous collection of over half a million images, photographed at the Diocesan Archive in Tarnów in 1997. This is the first major publication of microfilm scans carried out in cooperation with a Diocese and FamilySearch outside their official platform. The materials will be published on Skanoteka and available to all users.
This entire project demonstrates that collaboration between different organizations and institutions is possible and can bring real benefits to all researchers.
We sincerely thank Archive Director Father Krzysztof Kamieński, Ph.D., for his trust and openness, as well as the Board of the Polish Genealogical Society for making possible the trips to Tarnów and ensuring each digitization session was used as efficiently as possible. We greatly appreciate the contribution of our partner FamilySearch, without which it would not be possible to make these materials available so smoothly.
Our sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to this initiative:
- The visionaries behind this crazy and seemingly unachievable project
- The scanning team, Skanoteka administrators, and people who handled material processing – they all donated something very precious: their personal time and energy
- Everyone who supported this project financially to cover equipment and travel costs
We have more challenges ahead, as we still see so much potential in this area of our work. We want more diocesan archives to open up to genealogists and make their resources available to everyone who needs them. We are committed to doing such projects right: transparently, based on clear agreements respecting ownership rights and the wishes of repositories – in order to bring lasting and valuable results.