Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Access to documents of the National Documentary Fund containing information about a person’s private life, as well as to structured personal data collections, is regulated by the Law on Documents and Archives of the Republic of Lithuania. Article 20(5) of this Law establishes the time limits for restricting public access to such documents.
Under this Law, access to birth registers is restricted for 100 years, while marriage and death registers are subject to restrictions of 70 and 30 years respectively. However, access to documents or copies of documents received from non-state organizations, private individuals, or legal entities may be restricted in accordance with the conditions of use specified in the transfer agreement.
A 100-year access restriction period applies to digital copies of birth, marriage, and death register books, parishioner lists, and other documents preserved in the churches of Lithuanian dioceses (LVIA fonds Nos. 3001–3007). This restriction has been applied in accordance with the Agreement of 30 May 2016 between the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Bishops’ Conference on the digitization of parish register books held in the Roman Catholic parishes of Lithuania.
Access to records containing personal data is restricted in accordance with the Law on Documents and Archives of the Republic of Lithuania:
- Birth records are generally accessible 100 years after a person's birth. If 100 years have not yet passed since the person's birth, access to the record is generally restricted.
- Death records are generally accessible 30 years after a person's death. If 30 years have not yet passed since the date of death, the record is generally not publicly accessible.
- Marriage records are generally accessible 70 years after the record was created when neither the person's date of birth nor date of death is known. If 70 years have not yet passed since the marriage record was created, access to the record is generally restricted.
These time limits are established in Article 20(5) of the Law on Documents and Archives of the Republic of Lithuania. The Lithuanian version of the law is available here:
Until the beginning of 2022, when the project “Electronic Services – Creation of the EAIS Digital Reading Room” implemented by the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania was launched, digital images of register books were uploaded and made available on the website www.epaveldas.lt.
Since 2022, digitized files have been uploaded to the EAIS Digital Reading Room, where the register books available on www.epaveldas.lt can also be accessed. In turn, the books available in the EAIS Digital Reading Room at https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext are also visible on the www.epaveldas.lt website.
Due to the way the Digital Reading Room and www.epaveldas.lt websites are interconnected, the main screen of www.epaveldas.lt displays only the covers of those files that have already been uploaded to the EAIS Digital Reading Room at https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext.
To view the entire file, click on the displayed cover image of the file you wish to view. Then, at the bottom of the left side of the screen, expand the section “Object Data”. In the information that opens, click the active Digital Reading Room link to view the entire file.
On the Archives website at https://lvia.archyvai.lrv.lt/lt/fondu-rodykles/, there is an Index of Parish Registers of the Former Vilnius Roman Catholic Diocese Churches, Now Located in the Territory of Belarus.
It contains information about all the fonds and inventories held by the Lithuanian State Historical Archives that contain parish registers of churches belonging to the former Vilnius Diocese and located in what is now the territory of Belarus.
The Lithuanian State Historical Archives did not receive for preservation any lists of buried persons, burial and grave registration journals, or cemetery registers.
The only way to identify persons who died before 1940 is to consult the death registers of the specific church, which indicate the cemetery where the deceased person was buried.
In civil registration records from 1940 onward, only the deceased person’s place of residence is generally indicated, rather than the place of burial (with rare exceptions in the years 1940–1943).
For information about burials after 1940, inquiries should be directed to the cemetery administration.