About

Crowdsourcing

In June 2015 the Danish National Archives launched a pilot project about crowdsourcing records from the Danish West Indies.

The West Indian islands were transferred from Denmark to the USA almost one hundred years ago. This is being commemorated by a comprehensive digitization project. As part of this project, the Danish National Archives has opened the possibility of crowdsourcing in English.

Help us make the records available to everyone

All transcriptions make it easier to search the contents of the documents and as all transcriptions will be included in the Danish National Archives’ search database. Find more information and join us here.

Pilot project

The Danish National Archives’ pilot project on transcribing the Danish West Indian records includes sources that are especially important for genealogy and personal history, such as censuses, tax records, registers of persons departing and arriving in the islands, parish records of births, marriages and deaths, muster rolls for the West Indian troops, muster rolls for the Gendarmerie Corps and police court records.

The aim of the pilot project is:

  • To test the public’s interest in crowdsourcing these archival materials
  • To test the speed and quality of the transcriptions
  • To test the Danish National Archives’ crowdsourcing portal

Please contact Niklas Thode Jensen on ntj@sa.dk if you are interested in participating.

The pilot project runs until the end of 2017 and will result in a report about the experiences gained from the project.