Netherlands National Archives Data Sets Relating to World War II

The following is a notice sent to the IAJGS (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies) Public Records Access Monitoring Committee’s mailing list and is republished here with permission:

The National Archives has made several data sets relating to World War II available as open data.  Go to: https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/over-het-na/datalab-nationaal-archief/open-data-sets

The open datasets for the archive inventories can be downloaded, via the link to the archive inventory, as PDF and XML. For the indexes, the open datasets can be downloaded, via the link to the index, as a zip file containing a csv and xml file.  The text on the relevant web pages can also be used as open data.

Although these are open datasets, they may contain personal data of living persons. In chapter 5 of the privacy regulations of the National Archives you can read whether and how you may continue to use this data.  https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/privacyreglement-nationaal-archief

The open datasets currently made available by the National Archives largely consist of archive inventories and indexes. An archive inventory always consists of a description of the archive and a description of the archive components. An index is a list with data about, for example, people, place names or keywords from the archive components.

More than 400,000 open data photos from the National Archives are available through Wikimedia Commons. About 9000 photos have ‘World War II’ in the description.

To view and use the National Archives World War ll photos from Wikimedia Commons see:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=tweede+wereldoorlog+nationaal+archief&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image

Thank you to Yvette Hoitink, CG®    Dutch Genealogy Blog for informing us about this data set.

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee