Arkiv Digital: Free Weekend

ArkivDig­i­tal, the pre­mier inde­pen­dent sub­scrip­tion-based genealog­i­cal research web­site in Swe­den, will be free this week­end in cel­e­bra­tion of Swe­den’s “Geneal­o­gy Research Day” (March 19th).

The site boasts 26 mil­lion records online in col­or. I have writ­ten about the site pre­vi­ous­ly (“Review: Gen­line vs. Arkiv Dig­i­tal”). The site is con­tin­u­ing to improve, and there is a beta ver­sion of a new Eng­lish ArkivDig­i­tal appli­ca­tion. (The Java-based appli­ca­tion runs on your desk­top and helps you find and nav­i­gate through images on ArchivDig­i­tal’s web­site.)

While most of the doc­u­ments in the Swedish church records that make up the bulk of the ArkivDig­i­tal col­lec­tion are not as col­or­ful as the exam­ple above, I was sur­prised at how much eas­i­er it is to read hand­writ­ten images in col­or than it is in black and white. It prob­a­bly has to do with the paper in grayscale not pro­vid­ing the same con­trast to the let­ter­ing as one sees in the the sepia-toned col­or images on ArkivDig­i­tal.

I high­ly rec­om­mend the site, and since you can use it free this week­end, you can deter­mine if it’s some­thing you want to sub­scribe to or not.