Ambition

Genlias is a product of the combined effort of a large number of participating public archives in the Netherlands and overseas. The name is a contraction of the words 'genealogy' (research into family trees) and 'lias' (a bundle of papers threaded together, which was a storage method frequently used in the past).

Genlias distinguishes itself in three ways:

• Reliability
  Genlias can attain a high degree of reliability by using information stemming from authentic records from the Civil Register.
• Quality
  From a functional point of view, Genlias is an optimal system for opening up genealogical information from the Netherlands and overseas in a user-friendly environment.
• National searching
  Genlias is a national database that allows you to search the whole of the Netherlands. Provincial boundaries are of no importance. Data from overseas is also entered.

Dutch archives aim to enter all data from the open civil registers in the Netherlands into Genlias in the near future. These will be supplemented with additional information from older sources and statements of succession.

Netherlands Overseas will include information about the population from countries that have had or still have a constitutional relationship with the Netherlands and whose archives want to participate in Genlias. We intend to invite more countries to participate in the future.

But the ambition extends even further. Research into family trees is an active historical study that provides answers to the following questions. How did our ancestors live? What did they do for a living? Were they rich or poor? Such a quest into the past can be a real 'historical sensation'.