There are many reference works indispensable for researching Polish local history and genealogy, but none of them can be compared to Slownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów slowianskich (The geographical dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavic countries). This remarkable achievement of late 19th century Polish scholarship remains unmatched, and not only by anything in Poland - no project of similar scope has ever been completed for other countries. It was published in Warsaw in 14 volumes, with additional 2 volumes of amendments, between 1880 and 1902. The idea was conceived by Filip Sulimierski and the editor-in-chief was Bronislaw Chlebowski (from volume 6 on assisted by Jozef Krzywicki). The publication of the first 10 volumes was financed by Wladyslaw Walewski and the rest of the set - by the famous "Dr. Mianowski's Fund". The authors of individual entries included many of the most renowned Polish scholars of the period.

The entries in the Slownik cover all regions, towns, villages and other settlements, mountains, rivers and lakes of the Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland); the Baltic, Western and Southern gubernias of the Russian Empire; Western and Eastern Prussia; the Grand Duchy of Poznan and Prussian Silesia; Galicia, Austrian Silesia, Moravia, Slovak parts of Hungary and Bukovina, and additionally also more important places in the remaining gubernias of European Russia (such as county seats, parishes, railroad stations, etc.). It is, therefore, of interest not only to Polish researchers but also to German, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Slovak, Moravian, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian and even Lusatian.

Every entry contains (to a varying degree of detail) all available information including detailed description of a given place in the late 19th c., including: geographic and administrative (both political and church - for all denominations) placement, demographic, social, religious and other statistics; schools, industry, communication, agriculture, trade; historical survey - foundation, important events; names of successive owners; names of inhabitants; and a bibliography with all relevant books and articles.

Recognizing the importance of the Slownik, the state-owned publishing house Wydawnictwa Artystyczne i Filmowe of Warsaw prepared a facsimile edition which was published in 1986-1987, in a very expensive limited edition of 1,000 copies. It has long been out of print and thus (because of the rarity of both editions of the Slownik) all this wealth of information could so far be accessed only at major libraries, often on microfilm.

The exceptional value of that information inspired Szymon Konarski, one of Poland's greatest genealogical scholars, to compile an index of surnames for the Slownik. This work was started by him in the 1930's and finished by Slawomir Gorzynski in 1995, when the index was published by Wydawnictwo DiG in Warsaw.

The idea to produce a low-cost electronic edition of the Slownik, available to everyone interested, was conceived early in 2000, and a year later the Polish Genealogical Society of America in Chicago took upon itself the duties and the risks of the publisher. That organization - the first and most important association promoting genealogical research among Americans of Polish descent - had always understood the value of the Slownik for genealogists and for the Polonia community, and regularly published translations of individual entries in its bulletin and journals over many years. They were translated by the PGSA publication editor, William F. Hoffman, who also prepared a number of references, maps and tutorials for the Slownik users. Many of them were adapted from material that he and Jonathan D. Shea compiled for their book In Their Words: A Genealogist's Translation Guide to Polish, German, Latin, and Russian Documents. Volume 1: Polish. Some of those aids have been updated and are included with the present edition in electronic form.

Most volumes of the Slownik have exactly 960 pages (the 3 exceptions differ by about 30 pages) and the 2 supplementary volumes have 640 and 741 pages. The total number of pages - including those with separate pagination in 2 volumes - is therefore 14,785. The new DjVu compression technology developed by AT&T Labs and distributed by LizardTech made it possible to fit the whole Slownik on just one standard CD-ROM with exceptionally good image and printout quality. The software needed to view and print the DjVu images is freely available for major computer platforms (current versions included on this CD-ROM) as plug-ins for Web browsers, which makes this edition easy to use.

The additional materials mentioned above include the following items:

• Abbreviations used in the Slownik - which is basically the abbreviations list at the beginning of Volume 1 with translations of all terms into English and explanations for some of them.
• Measurements - with the basic units of length, distance and area, which is a partial translation of the list in Volume 1.
• Glossary - aimed specifically at the English-speaking and other non-Polish users, with translations and explanations of many terms often used in the Slownik entries.
• County (powiat) names - a list of names for all counties in adjectival and noun forms in appropriate languages (Polish, German, Russian) and province (województwo) to which they belonged at the end of the 19th c. This list is accompanied by two maps: one showing general administrative divisionsof Polish lands at that time and a detailed map of all counties (based on the map by Jerzy Lemené and Henryk Rutkowski, included in Historia Polski, vol. 3, part 1, Warszawa 1963).
• The above list is accompanied by that with abbreviations for province (województwo) names in various time-ranges and with the maps of province boundaries during the past 50 years: 1960-75,1975-98, and since 1999
• A map of Poland between the two world wars.
• Administrative divisions of pre-partition Poland (17th-18th c.) - with the accompanying mapshowing the provinces in 1771 (based on the map by Henryk Rutkowski, Krzysztof Buczkowski and Dariusz Gotlib published in Poczet polskich rodów arystokratycznych by Teresa Zielinska, Warszawa 1997).

All of the above aids can be used by Polish and English users without special difficulty. For the benefit of those users who do not read Polish, William F. Hoffman has translated the original Introduction by Filip Sulimierski from the beginning of Volume 1 into English. Other materials, such as translations of sample entries, are available on the Web site of the Polish Genealogical Society of America at www.pgsa.org. This collection of translations and aids will certainly grow once this edition is widely available and volunteers will donate English versions of more entries or start other project.

--- Rafal T. Prinke