What is the digitization of cemeteries? – nra.lv

It is possible that once in a while someone has experienced a situation when, going to the cemetery, they want to see the resting place of a distant relative, but several years have passed, the memory fails, they have to wander through the aisles and in the end they do not manage to find it. So that such moments do not have to be experienced, and everyone could find the graves of relatives and friends, a digitalization system of cemeteries was created on the Internet ten years ago. What it really is, how it works and whether it is really useful for anyone, says “360TV ZIĆneši”.

There are about 5,500 different cemeteries in Latvia, but only a tenth of them are digitized. So how does the digitization process work?

Mick Blate, the owner of the cemetery digitization company “Cemety”, says: “You look at each row, write down the data, then sit at the computer and redraw everything, then the quality controller checks everything again, takes a photo and moves on.”
Then all the data is entered into the system and becomes freely available to each of us. And as the company admits, every year thousands of people have managed to find their loved ones in this way. One of them is Dāvis: “I use the digitization of graves to find the graves of my relatives. And I also managed to find it – in Cēsa cemetery, directly through this website. Going to the cemetery, it turns out that it was the last moment to do it, because a notice had already been put up that there would be a mass burial. I went, cleaned up and the family graves were saved.”

Digitization is paid for by municipalities on their own initiative. For example, all or six cemeteries in Mārupe county have been digitized. It cost the municipality approximately 18,000 euros.

Mick Blate reveals: “At the same time, there are municipalities that do not show interest, to whom it seems like a waste of money that they have a grave manager who goes to the graves and tells them what is happening there.”

However, this is usually where a serious problem begins, because the archiving of graves is not prohibited by law, so the caretakers of the graves do whatever they want. Notepads are said to be chaotic, so often, in case of need, relatives cannot even be given information.