1.  The National Cemetery Recording Project
   Project Leader - Petro Coreejes-Brink

   This Project, managed as a GSSA National Project under the auspices of the GSSA National Executive, was started in the early 1980's, with the objective of recording the headstones in smaller SA cemeteries; the information was originally published by the Archives and so made available to family history researchers via Archive publications. Over the years, the scope has expanded to include other genealogical sources (throughout SA and in neighbouring countries), such as main cemeteries, burial registers, monuments and memorials; in addition, modern technology has allowed the GSSA to publish this information on an annual DVD.

   Data sources, recorded and submitted by volunteers, include manuscripts, photocopies of registers and headstone photographs.
   

   DVD 8 , which contains 371 162 names drawn from 2672 cemeteries, was published in March 2010: a small charge is made for the DVD to cover costs. Peter and Beverley Moss are the Data Coordinators; if you do notice any errors in the data, kindly inform us so that these can be corrected: email here Thank you.

   Please contact Andre Heydenrych to order the DVD.

2. The eGSSA Photo Project

   This Project, set up as an initiative of the eGSSA Branch of the GSSA, publishes photographs of genealogical information free of charge on the web, typically headstones, documents, family bibles etc. There are currently over 200 000 photos on the webpage, with thousands more presently being indexed for publication. This Project is coordinated by Alta Griffiths.
   

3. An improved service for users

   The DVD Project and the eGSSA Photo Project have separate management and use different databases, and so the data cannot be immediately correlated. Nevertheless, work is well under way on this data integration, which will benefit our research users. Readers will note that there is reference to both the DVD project and the Photo project in various project documentation.

   Reference can be made to the Excel files below for details of the various cemeteries that have been recorded, the recording status, etc.

4. An exciting new development

   When recording cemeteries, Recorders are asked to provide the GPS coordinates of the cemetery. Thus we have, over the years, built up a database of cemetery locations which can be visually displayed using Google Earth™ technology. This new GSSA Google Earth™ Cemetery Initiative provides an exciting new insight for researchers.

   Click here to access the Google Earth Initiative

5. Information files

The files below focus on the following information:

• "Cemetery Status Query" lists all cemeteries and shows processing status for both the DVD and eGSSA Photo projects. Note that Farms (based on the farm name) may contain more than one Cemetery Location ("GPSID").
• "Doc Query" lists all cemeteries with names of Recorder and Submitter. Note that, because of revisions and updates, one "Cemetery" may contain many documents, possibly from different Recorders
• "Homepage Monthly Doc Query" records the Documents added to the Cemetery Index in the previous month.
• "Homepage Monthly Names Query" records the Cemeteries where names were added to the database in the previous month.
• "Report Graph" provides information on data processing progress as at the end of the month stated.
• Copies of our quarterly newsletters are also included for information. To subscribe, please contact the Editor, John Schwartz.