Survey a source

Why this is the most useful thing you can do here

Nine places in ten on this map have never been surveyed. Not because the records are missing — because nobody has opened the archive's website and written down what is behind it. The atlas knows those sources exist; it does not know whether their images are free, behind a login, or not photographed at all.

That single fact is the difference between a researcher spending an evening well and spending it on a catalogue card. And establishing it takes about ten minutes per source.

What "surveying" actually means

1. Open the site. One of the 139 below whose homepage we have already read is the easiest start.
2. Find the records, not the homepage. Look for the register viewer — in French it is usually archives en ligne or état civil; in Italian registri; in German Kirchenbücher.
3. Answer one question: what does it cost to look?
   • free — images, no account
   • account — images, but you must register first
   • index — names transcribed, no images
   • catalogue — a card saying the paper exists, unphotographed
   • onsite — readable only in the building
   • paid or mixed — a charge, or a charge for part
4. Copy the sentence that proves it and the page it is on. Not a summary — the site's own words. That quotation is what lets the next person check you instead of trusting you.
5. Send it. Through this form, with the source's name, the class, the quotation and the URL.

Two rules, and they matter more than the speed

If a site refuses robots or asks you not to, stop. Record that it declined and why. This project does not defeat bot gates or pretend to be a browser it is not — an atlas that asks archives to trust it cannot be the thing that ignores them.

If you cannot tell, say you cannot tell. An honest unsurveyed is worth more than a confident guess. A place wrongly marked free costs somebody an evening and costs this directory the only thing it sells.