More and more residents are looking for the graves of their dead relatives, friends or acquaintances on the Internet - thousands of users connect to the cemetery register (https://zemelapiai.vplanas.lt/kapines/), which collects information about burials in Vilnius cemeteries, every month. Most of them are from Lithuania, but a number of Polish residents are also looking for nearby graves.
"In the digital age, more and more people are using technology, and we can see from the search activity that the cemetery register is a relevant service. Most of the time, residents are looking for the graves of relatives and friends, and they also visit to find out the roots of their family. Interested in where one or another deceased famous person is buried, history buffs are looking for historical places of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries. cemeteries with valuable artistic accents. The cemetery register contains not only the exact location of the grave site, but also photos of it and the monument," says Justinas Jasiūnas, product manager of the company "Vilniaus planas", which created the cemetery register.
Data on burials in Vilnius city cemeteries used to be stored in paper journals, which were kept by companies managing the cemeteries, so information about it was not very easily accessible to residents.
Digitization of the cemetery started four years ago. First, aerial photos of the cemeteries were taken by drones, then the grave sites were scratched from them and the headstones of the scratched cemeteries were photographed. In parallel, the burial logs of the cemeteries were photographed and their information digitized, and finally the digitized cemetery records were linked to the digital graves.
When inventorying a cemetery, the main and primary source was the entry in the cemetery logbook, indicating the official information about the deceased. J. Jasiūnas says that specialists encountered the problem during the digitization process that many surnames were written in Cyrillic in the Soviet era, and during transliteration they were translated in Latin characters. During this process, it was noticed that the names of the persons entered on the tombstone and in the cemetery log differed, so when discrepancies were found in the data of the dead, it was decided to publicize both versions - both the one presented in the cemetery log and the one engraved on the tombstone.
"The cemetery register is very easy to use - it is enough to enter the surname of the person you are looking for or part of it into the search and the system will provide information not only about the cemetery where the deceased is buried, but also the number of the grave site and its exact location on the cemetery map. This register also works on mobile devices, where you can use the provided GPS coordinates, based on them, get a link to where the cemetery is, and when you arrive at the cemetery, do not wander around it", says J. Jasiūnas.
Initially, the search of the cemetery register could be carried out only in Lithuanian, but it turned out that such functionality was not sufficient, because at that time residents of national minorities could not use such an option. According to J. Jasiūnas, after Lithuanian, the search in the cemetery register is usually performed in Russian and Polish.
"This year, the register of grave sites was updated and translated into English, Russian and Polish. This allows people not only to receive information in a foreign language, but also to search for it. There is also an option to write Hebrew characters in the search field. If it is not known exactly how the deceased's name is spelled in the original language, it can be summarized in Lithuanian letters, a search will find what you are looking for," he says.
New burials are also included in the cemetery register, when the person looking after the burial place of the buried person applies to the cemetery administration regarding the desired burial, and the latter adds a new cemetery to the cemetery register map, if the burial is new, or adds the information of the buried person to the already existing family grave site, if the person is buried in it.
According to J. Jasiūnas, any resident who has used the opportunity created in public access to submit a comment or upload a photo can both upload a photo of the grave site and report changes.
"The information of the grave of the dead is always corrected or supplemented when people go through the public environment of the cemetery register. This applies to both written information about the deceased and photos, if the image of the tombstone has changed. You can also submit comments if you notice any other inconsistencies", says the representative of "Vilniaus plano".
In the cemetery register, an innovation relevant to cemetery administrators and heritage specialists has appeared - the monitoring of historical cemeteries. During it, specialists record the violations that have occurred and assess the state of the cemetery object, and enter the information into the system. According to this, it is possible to see how and which historical burial grounds are damaged and need to be maintained.
Also, if the grave site is protected and exclusive, with valuable artistic accents, its 3D model is made so that in case of damage to the grave site, it can be accurately restored.
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