We continue the topic of publishing historical documents on the websites of Ukrainian archives. In the previous article in this series, we carried out review of documents, digital copies of which are presented on the websites of the central state archives of Ukraine. In this article, we will describe the state of digitization and online access to genealogical documents on the websites of the state archives of the Volyn, Rivne, and Zhytomyr regions. What is common to all three regions is that most of their territories belonged to historical Volyn, and in the 19th century to the Volyn province. During the Russian Empire, the center of the province was Zhytomyr, so regardless of whether a researcher is studying a family lineage from the Volyn or Rivne regions, he will still have to look for some of the documents in the Zhytomyr archive.
Home page of the State Archives of Rivne Region
In view of this, documents from State Archives of Zhytomyr Region traditionally very popular among researchers, because the former Volyn province covered the territory of several modern Ukrainian regions, including part of modern Khmelnytskyi and Ternopil. The archive collection was lucky to survive wars and other military-political cataclysms on our lands, so the DAZHO collection is quite complete and rich. Unfortunately, the Utah Genealogical Society did not work with this archive, so as of 2023, there are no documents from the Zhytomyr archive on the familysearch website. Nevertheless, in recent years, the archive staff has been systematically working on digitizing the funds. This work is progressing slowly due to limited financial and human resources. Nevertheless, on the Zhytomyr archive website, you can already download dozens of metrics of Orthodox churches, most of the metric books of Catholic churches, and some confessional and revision censuses. Also presented here is a reference apparatus - indexes of settlements in revision tales, digitized confessions, a list of cases of repressed persons and Osterbeiters, descriptions of a large number of archival funds, including those most in demand among genealogy researchers - metric and registry books, cases on the nobility, the governor's fund, presence in the affairs of peasants, clerks and many others.
On the website State Archives of Volyn Region Currently, electronic versions of fund descriptions are being filled. However, digital copies of cases are very poorly represented. At the time of writing this article, only cases related to the magistrate and city government of Lutsk, as well as several secondary funds, have been presented. From the fund descriptions, genealogy researchers will be interested not only in information about the registry books, but also in funds related to schooling in the interwar period, city governments, magistrates and county elders, the Volyn Financial Administration (fn. 34), information about emigration, etc.
Home page of the State Archives of Volyn Region
State Archives of Rivne Region conducted exemplary work on digitizing the metric books available in this institution. Today, most of the archive's metric books digitized and available online. In addition to the birth records, the digitized files include materials from the OUN-UPA, which operated in the Rivne region (file R-30). Birth records from both the Rivne and Volyn regional archives are not presented on the familysearch website.
On the website of the State Archives of Rivne Region, you can find a large number of digitized descriptions of both the Soviet and pre-Soviet periods. For genealogy researchers, materials covering education, the judicial sphere, notary, and land and property cases will be of interest. In order to select promising materials for processing, it is worth reviewing the guide to the archive funds, which can be downloaded in the reference section. The reference page should be noted separately - in addition to guides, it presents catalogs of birth records, various funds, indexes of households in Rivne, lists of those killed during World War II, a card index of UPA participants, voter lists, and other useful materials.