GOING DUTCH

If your ancestors once lived in the Netherlands, you’re very lucky. Not only do you get to visit this beautiful country and enjoy its famous cheeses, windmills, tulips and wooden shoes—but you’re also able to do a lot of your research online. What could be better than sitting in your armchair and searching through millions and millions of index entries, plus original record images from archives all over the Netherlands?

Every week, more and more records and images become available. The Dutch legal system is a true blessing for genealogists and other researchers. The law not only prescribes that archives should be accessible for everybody (with some exceptions for more recent records), but also that use of archival collections should be . As a result, every government website in the Netherlands offers its records for free—and in many cases, copies of those records are free, too. Even better, many archives nowadays offer free scanning on demand.