Sunday, October 26, 11 am Pacific
Speakers: Johannes Schwarz and Sara Mansutti
Transkribus Part 1:
Working with Tabular Data
Description: This workshop is a must! Join us to discover how Transkribus can help you unlock documents in tabular format and take your genealogical research to the next level with AI.
Transkribus is the leading online platform for the automatic recognition of text and the extraction of information from historical documents. Used by thousands of researchers, archives, libraries, and genealogists worldwide, it combines powerful AI tools with a user-friendly interface designed to make the transcription, searching, and processing of historical materials accessible to everyone, with no programming knowledge required. Originally developed as part of the Horizon 2020 “READ” EU project, it is now maintained and further developed by the non-profit-oriented READ-COOP European Cooperative Society.
This workshop focuses on one of Transkribus’features: table recognition. Genealogists and historical researchers often work with materials such as census records, parish registers, tax rolls, or other sources arranged in tabular format. These documents usually consist of numerous pages, making manual transcription a time-consuming process. In addition, standard text recognition workflows fail to capture the row/column relationships, which are crucial to understanding this type of data.
During the session, experts from Transkribus will guide you through the full process of training your first table model. You will learn how to draw tables in the Transkribus editor, create training data, train a model capable of automatically detecting similar tables, and evaluate its performance. Once recognized, the data can be searched for key information, such as names, dates, or places, or exported into a spreadsheet for further analysis and use in genealogical databases.
Lastly, the workshop will introduce the collaborative features available in Transkribus, such as sharing collections, working in teams, and reusing trained models across projects. It will end with a Q&A session, offering participants the opportunity to ask questions and receive advice from Transkribus experts.
The workshop is document-driven and tailored to the materials participants submit in advance, enabling you to apply each step of the workflow to your own sources.
Email us your documents with tabular data that you would like to process with Transkribus by October 5, 2025. Email: membership@scjgs.org
Please note: This workshop is designed for users already familiar with the basics of Transkribus. To ensure the best learning experience and acquire all the essential knowledge about Transkribus, we kindly request the participants to complete some preparatory steps:
- Registrants will receive preliminary materials and introductory videos.
- If you are new to the platform, register at https://app.transkribus.org/, upload a few pages, and test the basic text recognition feature using one of our public models (for more guidance, read the Beginners’ Guide to Transkribus on our Help Center).
This workshop will be followed by a second one in January focused on training custom text recognition models.
About Johannes Schwarz and Sara Mansutti
Johannes Schwarz is a Customer Success Manager at READ-COOP. He studied Music History as well as Medieval German Literature and European Ethnology in Kiel and Vienna, and has a strong expertise in palaeography and genealogical research.
Sara Mansutti is a Customer Success Manager at READ-COOP, the European Cooperative Society behind the Transkribus platform, where she has worked since 2022. She holds a PhD in Digital Humanities from University College Cork, Ireland. Her research interests include early modern Italian history, Digital Humanities, and crowdsourcing.
Non-members pay $5.00 Zoom link will be sent the week of the event. Members automatically receive a Zoom link.
Sunday, Nov 16, 1 pm Pacific
Speaker: Steve Morse, PhD, One-Pages Creator
Newly Updated: One-Step Webpages: A Hodgepodge of Lesser Known Gems
Description: Description: This is a revised sequel to the Potpourri talk (see abstract for that talk). There are too many utilities on the One-Step website to be covered in a single talk, so many of them found their way to the cutting room floor when the Potpourri talk was being edited. However, several of those are quite useful. This talk describes those gems that you might not otherwise be aware of. They range from problems with genealogical searches and cursive writing to problems with accentuated characters to problems with large numbers, and many other gems as well.
About Steve Morse
Stephen Morse is the creator of the One-Step Website for which he has received both the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Outstanding Contribution Award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, Award of Merit from the National Genealogical Society, first-ever Excellence Award from the Association of Professional Genealogists, and two awards that he cannot pronounce from Polish genealogical societies.
In his other life Morse is a computer professional with a doctorate degree in electrical engineering. He has held various research, development, and teaching positions, authored numerous technical papers, written four textbooks, and holds and holds four patents. He is best known as the architect of the Intel 8086 (the granddaddy of today’s Pentium processor), which sparked the PC revolution nearly 45 years ago
Non-members pay $5.00 Zoom link will be sent the week of the event. Members automatically receive a Zoom link.
Sunday, December 7, 11am Pacific
Speaker: Serafima Velkovich, PhD
Arolsen Archives: History Exploration & Online Access
Description: Formerly known as the International Tracing Service, the Arolsen Archives was established by the International Red Cross and Allied forces at the end of World War II to trace missing and displaced people and help reunite survivors with their relatives. Today the archives are the largest repository for names’ searching related to WWII.
In this lecture, Dr. Serafima Velkovich will demystify the Arolsen Archives by describing its history, the types of files it holds, and what information can be gleaned from those files. Additionally, she will offer strategies for identifying relevant documents and key clues when searching its Online Archives and additional collections available at the Arolsen Archives and partner institutions worldwide, including Yad Vashem.
About Serafima Velcovich
Serafima Velkovich is Head of the Family Roots Research Section in Yad Vashem Archives. She is involved in research of names and fates of Holocaust victims and survivors in Yad Vashem’s and Arolsen Archives’ databases. She lectures on the use of resources for names research, participates in conferences and films on genealogy related topics, and leads the genealogy course and workshops. Serafima is a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was EHRI fellow in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and received scholarships from Yad Vashem and The Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry. She is a member of the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) just topic.
Non-members pay $5.00 Zoom link will be sent the week of the event. Members automatically receive a Zoom link.
Sunday, January 11, 1pm Pacific
Speaker: Rhoda Miller, Ed.D., CG
Death Research:The Final Analysis (1.5 hrs)
Description: Need to learn more about a person’s life? Try looking into their death! Death records are often the key that unlocks family connections, origins, and stories long forgotten. In this presentation, Rhoda Miller will explore the many sources available for death research—including civil certificates, cemeteries, landsmanshaft, synagogue records, gravestones, obituaries and more. Learn how to interpret Hebrew inscriptions, navigate related databases, and uncover hidden details about your ancestors’ lives and communities. Whether you’re just starting out or refining your family tree, this session will provide practical strategies and resources to enrich your genealogy research. Mini case studies will be utilized to demonstrate the process of following the trail to using common and less common resources.
About Rhoda Miller
Rhoda Miller, Ed.D., CG® has been a Certified Genealogist since 1998, retired 2023, specializing in Jewish research and Holocaust studies. Rhoda is a Past President of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Long Island (JGSLI) and currently serves on the Liaison Committee of the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies (IAJGS). With JGSLI, she led the award-winning project of publishing Jewish Community of Long Island. She is a past board member of LitvakSIG and is currently the Coordinator for the Svencionys Research District. Rhoda retired as a Genealogist Researcher for Ancestry ProGenealogists.
Non-members pay $5.00 Zoom link will be sent the week of the event. Members automatically receive a Zoom link.
Sunday, January 25, 11 am Pacific
Speakers: Johannes Schwarz and Sara Mansutti
Transkribus: Training Your First Text Recognition Model Pt. 2
Description: Transkribus is the leading online platform for the automatic recognition of text and the extraction of information from historical documents. It combines powerful AI tools with a user-friendly interface, requiring no programming skills.
Following the October 2025 workshop on table recognition, this second session focuses on one of Transkribus’ most powerful features: training text recognition models tailored to the specific script of your historical documents. Unlike Large Language Models like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, Transkribus is specifically
designed for historical handwriting and languages, and allows you to customize models for greater accuracy.
During the workshop, experts from Transkribus will guide you through the process of training your first table model. You will learn how to prepare the training data, train the model and configure the advanced settings, evaluate its performance, and, lastly, apply the model to your own material. Additionally, you will discover how to search transcriptions with Transkribus or export them for further use.
Please note: Once registered, we will send you prerequisite study materials and. instructions to submit your tabular documents.
About Johannes Schwarz and Sara Mansutti
Johannes Schwarz is a Customer Success Manager at READ-COOP. He studied Music History as well as Medieval German Literature and European Ethnology in Kiel and Vienna, and has a strong expertise in palaeography and genealogical research.
Sara Mansutti is a Customer Success Manager at READ-COOP, the European Cooperative Society behind the Transkribus platform, where she has worked since 2022. She holds a PhD in Digital Humanities from University College Cork, Ireland. Her research interests include early modern Italian history, Digital Humanities, and crowdsourcing.
Non-members pay $5.00 Zoom link will be sent the week of the event. Members automatically receive a Zoom link.
Sunday, February 22, 1 pm Pacific
Speaker: John Motzi, PhD
Two-Sibling Visual Phasing with DNA Painter
Description: Visual Phasing can be performed using just two siblings! This methodology uses DNA Painter Chromosome Maps of known matches, combined with inferred segments & traditional visual phasing techniques. It identifies DNA segments shared among siblings and cousins to determine which segments were inherited from which grandparents, even without parent testing.
Using chromosome maps, a larger number of cousin comparisons can be referenced more quickly than with Gedmatch 1:1 comparisons. Since the two-sibling visual phasing problem requires a larger number of cousin comparisons, the use of chromosome maps facilitates the process.
Please note that this is an intermediate level workshop. Prior study is not required but highly recommended. John Motzi has put together 5 short video lessons to help prepare you for this chance of a lifetime presentation. Once registered you will receive detailed information and study materials.
- Intro to Chromosome Mapping (45 minutes video) by Jonny Perl
- Introduction to Recombination (10 minutes video by JM)
- Introduction to the concepts of Visual Phasing (10 minutes video by JM)
- Preparation of the Visual Phasing Worksheet (15 minutes video + materials by JM)
- Overview of Visual Phasing Methodology for Two Siblings (10 minutes video by JM)
About John Motzi
John Motzi, Ph.D., is a retired pharmaceutical research scientist and manager with more than 30 years of industrial experience. He is a passionate amateur genealogist with over twenty-five years of experience, including genetic genealogy since 2013. He has studied at GRIP, is the co-leader of an advanced genetic genealogy discussion group and is a Co-Administrator of the FTDNA T1 mtDNA Haplogroup Project.
Non-members pay $5.00 Zoom link will be sent the week of the event. Members automatically receive a Zoom link.
