Tracing your European Roots: New Internet Gateway for Documents and Archives in Europe

This blog post was written in Spanish by our colleague, Ania. Para leer este artículo en Español, presione aquí.

For those of you looking for archives and documents relating to your European ancestors or parents APEnet (Archives Portal Europe) may be of great help to you.

The goal of the APEnet project is to build an Internet Gateway for Documents and Archives in Europe of fourteen European National Archives, and in cooperation with EUROPEANA, to create a common space for European archives and digital collections.

The project has been commissioned by the European Commission and is being led by the Cultural Ministry of Spain. Twelve states of the European Union have formed this great initiative, including Finland, France, Germany, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Lithuania, Greece, and Estonia.

The APEnet project seeks to facilitate the discovery of citizens, public administrations, and European companies.  The site is multilingual and available in all of the official languages of the European Union.

APEnet currently has fourteen European national archives and provides unified access to archival resources among EU countries. Information available ranges from actual archives, documents describing archives, to scanned versions of original documents.

This is exciting news for those researching their European roots. Click here to visit the site.