About this site

This site is part of the project "Many Hands make light work: open archives through crowdsourcing", an initiative of the Amsterdam City Archives. The project started in 2010 and will last three years. The aim of this project is to develop a platform where all Dutch archives can offer scans of their scans to be indexed by the public. Everyone with a passion for our past is invited to contribute in exchange for fun, honour and (some) profit. The website is intended for personal and non-commercial use.

Pilot: Militia Records (completed in january 2013)

Militia Records was the first pilot project offered to the Many Hands volunteers. This pilot has been completed. These records cover the period from 1811 to 1940. The goal is to compile a complete list of all Dutch men drafted for military service during those years. The military service registers come from throughout the Netherlands and are preserved in almost all archives. After an extensive recruitment campaign, 16 Dutch archival institutions agreed to participate in the project.

Crowdsourcing: Many Hands

Indexing of the records is done on the website VeleHanden.nl. Here, the names, birth dates and birthplaces of the men who served are recorded for a searchable database. All information is double-checked by Many Hands volunteers. Once the data is approved it is stored on the website Militieregisters.nl. The data is then searchable and made available for download for a fee. The volunteers who help with the indexing earn points that can be redeemed for credits. These credits can be used to buy scans and downloads of data on Militieregisters.nl.

Militia Records and Many Hands in the press

Publications by Amsterdam City Archives:

'Open archieven door crowdsourcing', Ellen Fleurbaay, in: Archievenblad, november 2009
'Alle Militieregisters van Nederland online', Annemarie Laven, in: Archievenblad, juni 2010
'Voor wat hoort wat?', Annemarie Laven, in: Archievenblad, juni 2011
'Al doende leert men. VeleHanden.nl in de startblokken', Annemarie Laven, in: Archievenblad, oktober 2011

Presentations by Amsterdam City Archives:

KVAN-dagen, Leeuwarden, 6 juni 2011
Kom je ook? Amsterdam, 16 juni 2011
DISH 2011, Rotterdam, 7 december 2011

Publications by third parties:

Bas van den Broeke op de website van Kom je ook?
PhD-candidate Alexandra Eveleigh op haar Archives & Technology Blog
Ben Brumfield op zijn blog
Collega-archivaris Christian van der Ven op zijn blog
Johan Oomen & Lora Aroyo, 'Succesfactoren voor crowdsourcing', Informatie Professional 10, 2011, pp. 20-23