10 Practical Tips To Kick Start Your Research In The Netherlands
Dutch archives are vast and can therefore be a real goldmine. Large parts of the basic birth, marriage and death records since 1811 have been digitized and can be easily searched online. The rest of it however (records prior to 1811, deeds, military archives, photo archives and much, much more...), still exists only on paper or microfilm and is not accessible online (yet). In this article I will give you ten practical tips to get your search for digital and non-digital records started...
1. Know What You Want
It is tempting to set a goal like "Finding out everything I can about Grandpa". But if you are to find anything useful in Dutch archives, you have to come up with a question far more specific than that. It is wise to first set out to find the three basic archival records about this grandfather: his birth, marriage, and death records. So a better question to start with would be "I want a copy of grandpa's birth record".