Open Archives

Overview
Open Archives is a portal and aggregator of open historical data. By re-using open data from archives and researchers Open Archives makes an innovative portal which makes historical data from indexed sources available to end users in a user-friendly and innovative way. The innovation is especially evident with the automatic linking to other records, people in other data sources and additional context information.

Open data allows for innovation! With this in mind, all data within Open Archives is also provided in an unambiguous manner as open data via an API and OAI-PMH data provider so that other developers can get to work. This makes Open Archives an aggregator of open historical data.

Open Archives is an initiative by Bob Coret (Coret Genealogie).

Content

 * Information from 57 archives about 160 million (non-unique) persons, from records like civil and church registries, currently mostly from the Netherlands
 * Many records linked to scans at archives, or other websites like FamilySearch
 * Records linked to online biographies, online gravestone websites and online familytrees
 * Added context information from historical weather stations, census and historical maps
 * Very good English version of website

Internet address

 * https://www.openarch.nl/?lang=en (in English)
 * https://www.openarch.nl/?lang=nl (in Dutch)
 * https://www.openarch.nl/?lang=de (in German)
 * https://www.openarch.nl/?lang=fr (in French)

Cost
All content can be searched (including wildcard and phonetic search and searching for two names) and viewed for free. Additional services, like monitoring and export in GEDCOM and PDF are available in a premium subscription.