Dutch Archives progress: Detailed page of portal "Zoekakten" available

Question

Zoekakten provides an easier and faster way to find Familysearch images on microfilmed records of Dutch and Belgian archives, compared to the Familysearch method. This is accomplished by:

• Navigating quickly to the films of a specific city or village
• Presenting a choice of document types
• Describing the films thus selected
• Providing indexes to a film, so less browing is required
• Fast browsing by loading 15 images at a time

I completed (for the most part) a detailed description and howto of this portal. Some sections are still marked "to do", but I think it is quite usable as it stands now.

Have a look at:

http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Space:Zoekakten&public=1

Corrections and additions will be appreciated!

Answer 1

Oh my god, that is awesome. Thank you.

I got to Valkenburg (ZH) in like 4 clicks!

Comments

Hi Carrie,

Glad to see it's useful to you!

Answer 2

Nice.

In addition to being the only free online images of Amsterdam records that are easy to navigate (using the Amsterdam Stadsarchief indexes as a guide), you can often use the same approach with the indices provided by many other local, regional, and provincial archives when the archief does not have the image available or when it is a poor quality. When I just want to pull up a record that has been cited elsewhere Zoekakten is usually my first stop and Genver2 is my second as there are some different materials indexed on each site.

I would also add some more emphasis on the value of the two plaatsnamen tools, the one native to the site as well as the Histopo site - neither one is a complete list -  places that no longer exist are often missing, but they are still extremely helpful both when you are trying to decide where to look for records and when you are trying to decipher the place names in records

Comments

Hi Rob,

Glad you like it and thanks for the feedback!

I tried to focus on the "how" more than on the "why and when". On the Dutch Archives page I could add a column to the tables of archives indicating the availability of images (free, charged, clumsy, no), by clumsy meaning that  collections can only be browsed (no direct access from record, no indexes).

As to plaatsnamen, it could be an idea to make a resource page 'Dutch Geography' with links to (historical) geography information. To name just two:

http://geneaknowhow.net/digi/bronnen.html

http://www.cbg.nl/download/Repertorium-dtb-totaal-ocr.pdf

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I think specifying if a site is free or paid is a good idea, as well as if a site is 'index only' or 'images only' - I am not sure 'clumsy' is synonymous with 'image only' - If I am verifying a fact cited elsewhere images can be much easier to navigate images than indexes. Similarly a site that (notionally) links directly to a record from the index can still be 'clumsy' if the index search tools are rudimentary (no wildcards, limited filtering).

I like the idea of a page for historical place names - take the recent G2G question we worked on that involved 'van den Top' - none of the sites I consulted named Den Top as a place is Gelderland - and I am sure there are hundreds of other places that are similarly not going to come up as search results on existing sites.