We collect you and your family’s stories as expatriates. An expatriate is defined as someone who is temporarily outside the country that he/she considers to be his/her home country.

What We Collect

Our emphasis is on unique personal writing and collections in contrast to printed/published material which is usually available in other libraries and archives. Preferably unedited material written at the time and not rewritten later. We accept material in any language and from expatriates worldwide. Including: 

• Diaries of any kind: handwritten or typed, digitally (blog), commercially printed or plain note books. They may be detailed or sparsely recorded, have gaps or be continuous. Many people change the way they keep diaries over the years, so a variety of forms and entries is perfectly acceptable.
• Personal letters or email exchanges. However be aware of copyright issues from the sender.
• Scrap books where there is considerable annotation and input from the person putting the book together.
• Photo albums and films (DVD’s) preferably with captions and/or stories attached to it
• Printed material if it forms part of a larger collection of personal material, like passports, certificates, awards, membership cards, programmes, invitation cards, greeting cards, school reports and similar documents.

If you are not sure whether your material will be suitable for the Archive click here for more information or contact us.

Sending Your Contributions

You can see our contact us page for our postal address. We also have an agreement with Voerman, an international moving company, who can transport your material for free. We will make all the arrangements with the company on your behalf.

Support for Writers

If you would like to write about your experiences, or even publish a book, we work closely with the British writer Jo Parfitt, who runs a special course for life story writing. A special introductory workshop is held by Jo Parfitt at regular intervals at the Archive.

We also have an oral history department and you can ask to be interviewed by one of the members of the Oral History team. The Oral History team also runs projects interviewing people on specific issues.

Disclaimer

The Expatriate Archive Centre, established under Dutch law, works within the legal boundaries set by privacy laws and adheres to regulations concerning copyright. Only if you have given the Archive Centre permission to use your documents for – academic or genealogical – research, will researchers be granted access to it. Upon your request the material donated can be kept closed for a number of years (max 50) and/or all identifying information can be disguised when the material is used for research purposes. We do not accept any liability for publications resulting from the Archive Centre’s collection. We do our utmost to protect your privacy and the material donated for loss, decay and other damage but cannot accept any responsibility unless there has been a gross negligence of our duty.