Dutch Genealogy News for April 2019

Here is an overview of the new sources, projects, and news about archives that were announced last month.

Online sources

  • The collection of Family Printed Matter of the Nederlandse Genealogische Vereniging (Netherlands Genealogical Society) is now available via Open Archives. The index contains almost 400,000 entries. Volunteers are scanning the records to be added later.
  • Notarial records of many places in Friesland, mainly for the period 1926-1935, have been added to AlleFriezen.
  • Transcriptions of real estate transfer tax records (“overdrachtsbelasting”) from several places in East-Gelderland
  • The West-Fries Archief added the index of Dutch Reformed baptisms of Hoorn for the period 1614-1631 to their website.
  • The Flevoland archives have digitized the records of the Zuidelijke IJsselmeerpolders, the precursor of the current municipalities in southern Flevoland. Scans are available through their website.
  • for the 1700s have been added to GenealogieDomein.
  • Utrecht charity records (1623-1910) have been scanned and indexed and can be consulted via the “Persons” index of the Utrechts Archief website.

Websites

  • The The Hague City Archives has a new website. Their genealogical indexes are now available via an improved search engine. These indexes are now also available via Archieven.nl so you can search genealogical information from many archives at once.
  • The National Archives has moved their online collection to their main website. The website gahetNA is now offline. The entire collection, including finding aids and research guides, can now be found in the “Research” section of the Nationaal Archief website. The underlying collections are the same, but there is now a better integration between the sources and research guides. If you already had an account at gahetNA, you can use the same credentials on the new website. If you had bookmarks to the old site, they should redirect to the new website. Please use the “Feedback” button at the right of the site to submit compliments and/or suggestions for improvement.

Projects

  • The Rotterdam City Archives is using volunteers to index records about people who were arrested in Rotterdam in World War II. After the indexing is complete, the records will be matched with another database to determine who is living and who is deceased, so only the records about deceased people will be published. (Source: KIA)
  • The West-Fries Archief started a volunteer project to index the notarial records from that part of Noord-Holland. The records start in 1552. Volunteers can sign up at VeleHanden.
  • The Noord-Hollands Archief will be digitizing several population registers of Aalsmeer, Bloemendaal, and Uithoorn. The microfiches of this collection won’t be available during the digitization.
  • Several newspapers from Overijssel have been transported from the Historisch Centrum Overijssel to be digitized. The newspapers cover the French period (1811-1814) and several papers after World War II (1944-1966). The searchable scans will become available via Delpher. (Source: HCO)
  • The Noord-Hollands Archief and Nationaal Archief did a project to research the possibility of Handwritten Text Recognition technology using Transkribus. Initial tests showed an error rate of 20% at the character level. After training the model, that improved to 90-95% correct. The model is further expected to improve as more archives join and share their training sets. Because of these positive results, the pilot was extended to 2020, with a focus on the records of the Dutch East India Company and notarial records from the 1800s. (Source: NHA)

Archives

  • A change in regulations means government records now have to be transferred to an archive after 10 years instead of 20 years.  Funds have been made available to facilitate the transfer. (Source: Nationaal Archief)
  • The Noord-Hollands Archief will be renovating their location Janskerk from May to October 2019. Researchers can use the location Kleine Houtweg. (Source: Noord-Hollands Archief)
  • The reading room of the Amsterdam City Archives will be closed in August and September 2019 because 25 km/15 miles of records are being moved to a different location. More scanning-on-demand capacity is available in the months leading up to the move, so researchers can work from home. (Source: Amsterdam City Archives)
  • A new archival repository will be opened in Emmen, in a former building of the Topograhical service. The building is renovated to house 95 kilometers (60 miles) of records from the National Archives. The building will also house an installation to preserve acidic records, which will be used to treat the Central Archives of Special Jurisdictions, one of the most popular record sets, about the investigation and prosecution of World War II collaborators. (Source: Nationaal Archief)

Impression of the new repository in Emmen

About Yvette Hoitink

Yvette Hoitink, MLitt, CG®, QG™ is a professional genealogist, writer, and lecturer in the Netherlands. She has a Master of Letters in Family and Local History from the University of Dundee, and holds the Certification of Genealogist and Qualified Genealogist credentials. Yvette served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Professional Genealogists and won excellence awards for her articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly and the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly. Yvette has been doing genealogy for over 30 years. She helps people from across the world find their ancestors from the Netherlands and its former colonies, including New Netherland. Read about Yvette's professional genealogy services.

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