The website
Alle Groningers is a database maintained by the archives of the province Groningen.
What do they have?
Church books and BMD acts of the province Groningen. In a few cases, there are also scans (currently, about 800,000 acts and only 8,000 scans).
Is there an English interface?
No.
How do I use it?
The easiest way is to fill in achternaam, and maybe tussenvoegsel (infix) or voornaam (given name), and press Start zoeken (start searching), on the left of the page.
You can click Toon uitgebreide zoekopties (show advanced search options) for options like searching on two people, plaats (place), voor (before) or na (after) 1811, or periode (year to/from). If you use periode, you also need to select voor or na 1811, and at least one of geboorte (birth), huwelijk (marriage), overlijden, doop (baptism), or trouw (marriage) - otherwise you will not find anything.
In the list of search results, click on the name to see the details of the act. If the text Akte inzien (view act) is not gray, you can click it to view a scan.
How much does it cost?
The site is currently free, and I expect that will remain so, at least for searching in acts. There is no public statement about future charges for downloading scans.
Future plans
A Groninger is someone from Groningen, so alle Groningers means everyone from Groningen. The website aims to show data about alle Groningers, from the 17th to the mid-20th century.
Data entry of church books and DTB records will be finished in 2009, scanning of these records in 2010. After that, Alle Groningers wants to add portraits, film and sound fragments, notarial acts, and much more.
Conclusion
Alle Groningers is still a new site, and does not have a lot of info yet that is not also available on Genlias. But that should change soon, as more and more scans will be made available. If the site lives up to its promises, Alle Groningers will be an exciting project for everyone with Groningen roots.
An English interface would be a very welcome addition to this site.
Hi, Henk,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this great link and explaining it so well. I had some good luck using AltaVista's Babelfish to translate the website into English. It is a rough translation, but I was able to get the gist of the meaning. Now I am impatiently waiting to see when they add records from the municipality of Kloosterburen!
You're welcome, Miriam.
ReplyDeleteWhat are you looking for in Kloosterburen? There are scans and transcriptions of church membership books (1721-1811) online, and post-1811 marriages and deaths are indexed on Genlias.
Hi, Henk,
ReplyDeleteShortly after I left my last comment, I figured out how to use the Advanced Search feature and found that Alle Groningers has the same marriage and death information for Kloosterburen that Genlias does, which I've already added to my database. But what I'd really like to see are the birth records for this municipality!
I'll have to check into the church membership transcriptions and scans for my JONKER, Van der LAAN, ROZING, and WEIRINGA families. Thanks so much!
Births for Kloosterburen will be added eventually...
ReplyDeleteDo you know the Genlias Monitor? They let you define a Genlias search, and send you an e-mail if there are new results. So you don't have to check Genlias from time to time to find out if Kloosterburen is added, because Genlias Monitor will warn you.
Henk, you don't know how glad I was that you found the Genlias Monitor for me! I signed up for it years ago, when it first came out, and kept track of all the Genlias updates that way. Then all of a sudden, I didn't hear from them for the longest time. I figured they stopped reporting updates and "went out of business," so to speak. Later, I tried to find it on the Internet, without success, so again, I assumed they no longer offered their service. I am happy to see that they are still going (or perhaps have made a comeback!), and will sign back up with them at once.
ReplyDeleteThank you again so very much!