The magic of Open Archives isn't just in the millions of records and transcriptions it brings together — it's in what the community builds on top of them. This page showcases the tools, plugins, apps, and integrations crafted by third parties who've turned open archival data into something new: family tree helpers, search enhancers, visualizations, mobile companions, and more. Dive in, get inspired, and see what's possible when archives open their doors. If you are one of those developers, please contact me so I can assist you and showcase what you have built on Open Archives.
openarchieven-cli
| Description |
A small command-line tool that provides quick access to the Open Archieven Dutch genealogical API. Written in Rust, it is designed for humans, scripts, and AI agents alike, letting users search records, look up individual entries, and integrate genealogical lookups into their own automated workflows from the terminal. |
| Author |
Ruben J. Jongejan |
| Year |
2026 |
| License |
MIT (open source) |
| Link |
https://github.com/rvben/openarchieven-cli |
OpenArch mod for TNG
| Description |
An extension for TNG (The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding) that enriches each personal profile page with links to Open Archives. Originally developed for StamboomOnderzoek.com and built on the Open Archives API, it lets visitors browsing a person on a TNG family-tree site jump straight to matching records in the Dutch and Belgian archives, with smart name-matching that handles common spelling variations in old handwritten documents. |
| Author |
Marius Bakker |
| Year |
2023 |
| Languages |
Dutch, English, French, German |
| Link |
https://tng.lythgoes.net/wiki/index.php/OpenArch |
mcp-openarchieven
| Description |
A small project that acts as a bridge between AI assistants and the public JSON API of Open Archives. It lets AI agents search for people and events across the linked archives, look up exact matches by name and birth year, fetch detailed record data, retrieve "born N years ago" lists, pull historic Dutch census information, and read comments other researchers have added to records. In short, it gives an AI assistant a genealogist's toolkit, so it can help research Dutch and Belgian ancestors directly from the same data that powers Open Archives. |
| Author |
Peter de Wit |
| Year |
2025 |
| License |
MIT (open source, repository archived on Dec 14, 2025 and no longer actively maintained) |
| Link |
https://github.com/peterdewit/mcp-openarchieven |
gensearch
| Author |
rootsdev (maintained by Justin York) |
| Year |
2015 (latest release v2.4.3, 2020) |
| License |
MIT (open source) |
| Description |
A small JavaScript library that builds ready-to-use search URLs for a long list of genealogy websites — including Open Archives — from a single set of person details (given name, family name, dates, places). Genealogy apps and browser tools can drop it in to offer "search this person on Open Archives, Ancestry, FamilySearch, Genealogy Online, MyHeritage..." links without having to hardcode each site's URL format. The library powers, among other things, the RootsSearch Chrome extension. |
| Link |
https://github.com/rootsdev/gensearch |
Acoose.Centurial
| Description |
An extension package for the genealogy software Centurial which enables reading the structured metadata provided by Open Archives to be included as evidence. |
| Author |
Fouke Boss |
| Year |
2021 |
| License |
MIT (open source, no longer actively maintained) |
| Link |
https://github.com/foukeboss/Acoose.Centurial |