A special Dutch website went live earlier this week- Erfgoed Westland. It aims to offer all Westland's historical information in one place.
It is the brainchild of the Westland Historical Archive group and the Westlands Museum. In recent years these organizations' volunteers have digitized and described tens of thousands of images and documents. Now anyone interested can view these.
Westlands Museum curator Ton Immerzeel briefly discusses the historical greenhouse developments in Westland in a promo video.
Photos and names
The databank is very extensive, including some 300,000 records. These are photographs, postcards, deeds, books, newspapers, and objects. Most striking is the enormous file of more than 60,000 photographs, slides, and postcards. You can find the correct photo more easily by searching a specific word, village or street name, source, or time period. Visitors to the website can also download the images for free.
Those interested in genealogy will find the 'Personen' button most interesting. It contains 135,000 Westland birth, marriage, divorce, and death records. These are from as far back as 1812.
Stories
The Westland newspapers are a treasure trove of historical events. About 100 volumes of old, local newspapers (from 1873) have been digitized. The other sections include historic Building permits, Archives, Films & Audio, and Objects.
'Stories' is a very special section. It has only a few stories now, but soon, many more previously-published articles will be included. To preserve all this information, the website will eventually include many stories from Dutch authors. With their consent, of course.
Greenhouse horticulture's input
The website already houses an enormous amount of information. The Westland Historical Archive group and the Westlands Museum, however, want to expand this even further. For example, the museum is digitizing the entire photo collection of two weekly horticulture and floriculture sector magazines.
Historical associations and working groups are invited to add their data too. The Wateringen-Kwintsheul Historical Society was the first to do so. And their images, too, will soon be available on the site.
The website includes quite a few photos and videos of unknown provenance. Anyone who has more information about these should contact Erfgoed Westland.
You can visit the website here: www.erfgoedwestland.nl