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On this platform you can perform full text searches and browse automatically transcribed deeds from 18th century Amsterdam notaries. Based upon the transcriptions made of fifteen 18th century notaries a general model was created that should be able to read notarial handwritings from the Amsterdam area in this period. Another set of 21 Amsterdam notaries from the 18th century was created in order to test the possibilities of this model within a Transkribus keyword spotting environment. Of the following notaries, the first inventory number was selected: Abraham Tzeeuwen, Hendrik van Aken, Isaac Angelkot, Adrian Baars, Hermanus de Wolff, Benjamin Phaff, Salomon Dorper, Johannes Beukelaar, Thierry Daniel de Marolles, Abraham Coijmans, Jan Rijpland, Isaac Pool, Gerardus Wijthoff, Dominicus Geniets, Pieter de Wilde, Wessel van Kleef, Nathanael Wilthuijzen, Anthony Mijlius, Elbert Stoesak, Johan Christoph Wagner, Adam Houtkoper. The search is based on a keyword spotting tool which makes searches with different levels of confidence possible.
The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries 1578-1915 spans 30.000 large volumes, covering 3,5 centuries in time and 3,5 kilometres in length. It contains written and printed documents, parchments in precious bindings and seals revealing last wills, personal agreements, trading contracts, estate inventories, eyewitness testimonies of both daily life and critical events, and so much more. All together it paints a detailed image of all aspects of the lives of people of all social classes, inhabiting or passing through Amsterdam, from the 17th to the 20th century. It shows the worldwide connections between families, traders, settlers and scholars. On a greater scale the archive reflects the evolution of Amsterdam from a modest town to a centre of trade and tolerance - a city that thrived as a result of its international orientation. Furthermore, it contains the first proofs of innovative ways to finance worldwide logistics, start-ups leading to the exploding Baltic trade in the early-modern period, but also estate inventories including paintings from Rembrandt to Ruysdael owned by the cosmopolitan and connected families that surpassed all national boundaries, next to testimonies of disasters on board of ships manned by international mixed crews, transporting slaves from Africa to the Americas. The unique status of this archive was confirmed by the UNESCO in 2017 when the archive was added to the list of the Memory of the World. In 2016 indexing of this archive was started in the crowd source project 'Alle Amsterdamse Akten' (All Amsterdam Deeds). In 2018 the project 'Crowd Leert Computer Lezen' (Crowd Teaches Computer how to Read) was launched. This last project combines the power of the crowd with machine learning in order to develop new ideas about the disclosure of the Amsterdam notarial archive on a deeper level with other techniques. The results of this last project form the basis of the cooperation between Transkribus, crowd source platform VeleHanden and the Amsterdam City Archives.