The International Association of Amateur Heralds

I discovered an excellent new source for historical Dutch heraldry yesterday. The Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie has digitised its extensive collection of wax seals, artwork, and other heraldic material and very generously made it available to the world, free of charge. It's been online since late November.

The URL is : http://www.heraldischedatabank.nl/databank .

There are 95 958 items in the databank! The databank is browseable and also searchable by surname or keyword (in Dutch, of course).

Very interesting.

I appreciate that the owners of copyright material need to protect their pictures, but, it really, really, really annoys me when the 'watermark' is so dominant that it covers the picture and makes it difficult to appreciate the artwork and/or make out what the picture represents!

This site is not the only heraldic site that I would criticize for doing this.

All the best for the new year.

Regards,

Iain Boyd