^{The News}
Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

As you can see, we averaged nearly 8,000 unique Visitors a month over the year and those visitors average 1.89 visits/person each month. This is a relatively large increase of about 1,200 visitors/month over the 2013 average (a 17.5% rise) and those visitors averaged 0.2 more visits (leading to a 30% rise in total visits). Such a level of increase was a pleasant surprise to me! Even more surprising is that the most recent four months averaged even higher, exceeding 9,000 visitors per month.

Like last year, usage of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) Browser slipped, down to only 19% from 41% last year (and from over 50% in prior years). Firefox matched is usage proportion from last year, Safari rose 2% and Google Chrome 9%, but the big growth has been in the "Other" browser category, going from 7 to 18%. I can only assume that these represent smart phone browsers (which may mean we will need to consider how to make the BB website more accessible on small screens).

As for Computer Operating Systems, our visitors continue to predominantly use Windows-based computers (71% on average), with the Mac and Linux (Unix) operating systems trailing quite distantly. Interestingly, the "Unknown" operating system percentage went down from 4 to 3%. Given the large increase in "Other" browsers, I expected a corresponding rise in unknown (presumably smart phone) operating systems... but that did not occur. Anyone have some thoughts on this?



BB Staff: As I noted when writing about the 250th edition of the newsletter above, the BB staff is a fluid collection of individuals who, over varying tenures, give back to our community a bit of what they have learned while on their personal journey of family-history discovery. This year was no different in that we both lost and gained staff members. Retiring during 2014 were Bob Unger, Maureen Tighe-Brown and Ron Markland. New to the staff are Wilhelm Schmidt and Terry (Theresa) McWilliams. I thank our retirees for the years of service they gave to the BB community (both Bob and Maureen were in the earliest lists of staff members). I welcome, one more time, our newest contributors, Willi and Terry.

We also lost a good friend of the BB this year, Frank Tantsits, who, along with his brother Ed, provided (among other things) the base materials that became the LDS section of the BB website. Frank was never a staff member... but he was the closest thing to being one without actually doing so!

The BB would not exist without such giving, knowledgeable people as these!



BB Website: From a website perspective, I'm pleased to recognize a number of additions to our ever-growing collection of Burgenland-related information. BH&R celebrated their 15,000th honoree... then quickly blew past that count to over 17,500 now. Along the way, a Canadian module was added and the Illinois section was broken out into alphabetical sub-sections to accommodate the growth in both areas.

We also added a new BB DNA section, which is slowly growing as the team determines what information is worth preserving.

Beyond those, we added to our Hungarian Maps section, posted our English translation of Dr. Robert Hajszan's Neuberg history book "Zur Geschichte von Neuberg im Burgenland", updated the "Where Are We?" pages, changed our BB Search tool, and noted the release of the Catholic "Matricula Images with Indexes" for the Graz-Seckau diocese (Styria)... we are still awaiting the completion and release of the digitized Burgenland records. When they become available, we will, of course, announce them with great fanfare and a link, however, the Eisenstadt diocese has not yet committed to an availability date.
 


In addition, Associated Organizational Events worth noting again are summarized below:

The English issue of the 3rd Edition of Dr. Walter Dujmovits book, "Die Amerika-Wanderung der Burgenländer" was published early last year... and sales were excellent.

Titled "The Burgenländer Emigration to America," the English issue, 306 pages in length (compared to 299 pages in the German issue), is published in International A5 format (~8.27 x 5.83) with a "perfect-bound" paperback binding using "print-on-demand" online publisher, Lulu.com.

As you may recall, Dr. Dujmovits generously granted all publication rights and royalties (profits) for this issue to the Burgenland Bunch. After careful consideration, the BB's decision was to sell the book at its wholesale production cost of $10.45 (plus any tax & shipping), thus passing the "profit" to our membership through a much lower price (the standard undiscounted retail price is double the sum of production cost plus any royalty). Later in the year, Lulu dropped its wholesale production cost for the book to $7.41; we followed by reducing the purchase price to correspond.

The BB website homepage provides information on where to purchase the book, its sales count (761 copies as of December 28th), and any discounts provided by Lulu itself (and there is almost always some form of discount available through limited-time checkout codes, be it free shipping or price reductions of 10 to 35%).

As of November 21, the book had a "Lulu Sales Rank" of 422, making it a very successful book by Lulu's self-publishing standard (only 421 active books had sold more). However, its ranking has risen to 427 in recent days as other well-selling books are slightly out-pacing it over the Christmas season.

The book is the definitive history of the emigration of Burgenländers to the Americas, written by the leading authority on the subject. The BB is pleased to have been instrumental in bringing this material to English-reading audiences and we recommend that you treat yourself to a copy!

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Another Burgenland book, Edlitz: Dorf und Leute im Wandel der Zeit [Edlitz: Village and Its People Through the Ages], was also published this year on Lulu.com (see link Edlitz Book) by BB member Rudy Wolf.

This is a German-language book, published in the next-larger International format (A4; ~11.66 x 8.27), also with a "perfect-bound" paperback binding, consisting of 312 pages, which is available for a purchase price of $18.09.

Rudy's primary purposes with this edition were to reduce cost (the initial edition was published in Austria at €39.50 = $53 per copy) and to have the book printed and disseminated in the US, as he already had a few US and Canadian requests for the book. The BB provided assistance in getting this done and Lulu's price structure and distribution system helped him succeed with both goals.

As I noted when the book was first published, I found the text in the first half to be a comprehensive description of historical Burgenland life. Although written specifically about Edlitz, most of it applies equally well to every other Burgenland village. Hopefully, Rudi will consider an English translation and extend the legacy he has created!

As of December 10, the book had a "Lulu Sales Rank" of 35,106, having moved from rank 41,692 in mid-November.