Heritage Helpers is Picturae's unique crowd sourcing platform. Picturae is a dutch company active in the digitizing and providing access to heritage collections for museums of museums, archives and libraries at home and abroad.

Much of our heritage is locked up in archives and is not accessible to the public and/or scientific institutions. By digitizing and opening up heritage collections, we contribute to the growth of knowledge worldwide and preserve the heritage for generations to come.

Interested in history? A passion for the past? Or a fan of family history research? Then become a volunteer at Heritage Helpers! And help make collections accessible from behind your own computer, at a time that suits you. Anyone can contribute. Experience is not necessary.

What is Heritage Helpers?

Heritage Helpers is a crowdsourcing website of Picturae where archives and museums offer their digitized collections for access to the general public. The aim is to make collections searchable in this way and to ensure that they come online quickly. Because "indexing" is extremely time-consuming, it appeals to volunteers who enjoy working with historical documents.

The requested activities may differ per project. In many cases this involves retyping information in fields that can be seen next to the scan, for example: name, date, place of residence. But there are also projects where you are asked to provide photos with a description, to recognize old manuscripts, to georeference maps. etc. You can choose which projects you want to participate in. All scans are distributed twice to different participants and then checked. Making a mistake is therefore not a problem. You can also go to the forum with questions, where other volunteers and project leaders are happy to help you.

What do you get in return?

There are volunteers who have entered over 20.000 scans. There are also volunteers who like to enter a scan from time to time. Anything goes! Your efforts are rewarded with Heritage Helpers credits. You can exchange these credits for coupons that you can use to(for instance) order a large downloaded image or access to an exhibition.

Picturae: digitizing collections

Picturae digitizes everything from herbarium, (glass) negatives, audio, slides and microforms to books, maps or photos. From small to large size. From natural history collection to municipal archives. With us in Heerhugowaard or on location.

Picturae: retaining collections

Naturally, you want to store the digitized recordings of your collection or archive properly, sustainably and securely. An online location that is boarded up in accordance with all laws and regulations and with which you can easily share the collection.

Picturae: managing collections

How do you safely and smartly manage a digital collection or archive? How do you ensure that your digital image bank, archive or depot is properly searchable and remains, plus is interchangeable with other collections? Picturae thinks along, designs and takes care of everything.

Picturae: enriching and opening up collections

Search faster in an archive or collection? Add information to a collection? Want to boost education and research? Finding a new audience? Picturae likes co-creation: together we find the best solution to enrich and open up the collection.

Do you want to know more about us?

If you have any questions or want to know more about Heritage Helpers, please visit our website www.picturae.com or send us an email