Digitalarkivet’s New Service for Scanned Church Books: What’s Changing and How We Can Adapt
Nasjonalarkivet has launched Digitalarkivet new service for searching and viewing scanned church books (skanna kirkebøker). The rollout began in mid-December, and the service is still being improved based on feedback from heavy users—exactly the people who live in parish registers day in and day out.
If we rely on church books for Norwegian genealogy, this matters for one simple reason: the viewer is part of the method. A small change in layout, keyboard handling, or link placement can either speed up our work or slow it down.
This post provides a practical, genealogy-first overview of the Digitalarkivets new service for scanned church books, what it replaces, what has improved since December, and the main usability concerns raised in the forum thread.
What is the new church book service in Digitalarkivet?
Nasjonalarkivet describes the new solution as a set of pages for:
Search and results: https://nye.digitalarkivet.no/search/parish
Contents page for each church book:
https://nye.digitalarkivet.no/source/5940/parish/e40d0e6d-ebc4-44ad-b76b-da1d04223113?view=indexViewer focused on source information:
https://nye.digitalarkivet.no/source/5940/parish/e40d0e6d-ebc4-44ad-b76b-da1d04223113Viewer focused on the image (focus mode):
https://nye.digitalarkivet.no/source/5940/parish/e40d0e6d-ebc4-44ad-b76b-da1d04223113?mode=focus
For most of us, that last link is the heart of it: we want the page image to dominate, with source information available but not crowding the record.
What does it replace (and what does it not replace)?
Nasjonalarkivet clarifies that the new service is intended to replace the older “media” church book browsing and viewing pages:
Old (2015-era) paths that will be replaced:
Browse/search: https://media.digitalarkivet.no/kb/browse
Contents pages: https://media.digitalarkivet.no/kb/contents/5940
Viewer pages: https://media.digitalarkivet.no/view/5940/5
But there’s an important detail for day-to-day research:
“Finn kilde – Find source” stays — but will point to the new service
Many genealogists search for church books via Finn kilde, not via the old browse pages. Nasjonalarkivet says Finn kilde will remain, but links will eventually lead into the new church book service:
Finn kilde: https://www.digitalarkivet.no/search/sources
Why rebuild a viewer that already worked?
Nasjonalarkivet’s explanation is database-driven: Digitalarkivet is being rebuilt on a new database, and the older database will be phased out. Other newer services already use the new database, including:
Photo search: https://nye.digitalarkivet.no/search/photo
Document/transcription search: https://nye.digitalarkivet.no/search/transcription
They also note a practical internal reason that has real consequences for us: the old church-book indexing and maintenance process was complicated by tools “speaking” to older systems. Now they have a new tool that talks directly to the new database—so the church book service is moving with it.
What’s improved since December?
Several changes were made after early feedback:
Focus mode (image-first viewing) has been developed further:
https://nye.digitalarkivet.no/source/5940/parish/e40d0e6d-ebc4-44ad-b76b-da1d04223113?mode=focusA new function shows transcriptions linked to the image (where available)
A major image quality issue from December has been corrected: some images were displayed without proper sharpening/contrast adjustments; this is now fixed
Search UI tweaks: “Prestegjeld” and “Sokn” were moved under “Geografi” to make geographic search options easier to understand
Permanent links (brukslenker): what we should use for citations
For genealogists, stable links are as valuable as the record image itself.
Nasjonalarkivet confirms that the familiar permanent “brukslenke for sidevisning” formats will continue to work and will redirect to the new service:
In the new service, the permanent link format looks like:
A practical warning: “view/####/##” links were never truly permanent
Links like this…
…point to an index position rather than a fixed image file. Nasjonalarkivet says a temporary redirect exists based on today’s mapping, but for serious citation work we should prefer kb########### brukslenker.
What’s missing right now (and why it matters)
Two gaps will affect many research workflows:
No built-in print function or PDF booklet creation (though you can download single images)
No English-language version yet
If you routinely save PDF bundles for projects, client work, or family booklets, this is a real loss—at least for now.
What will happen next?
Nasjonalarkivet says they are implementing redirects so that:
All “brukslenker for sidevisning” redirect to the new service
Finn kilde will point to the new service
“Se skanna versjon” links from indexed parish register data (person posts, residence posts, actions, etc.) will point to the new service
The older (2015) service will be removed later, but for now remains accessible from:
One critical note: from now on, corrections and additions will only be made in the new service (indexing fixes, missing pages, newly indexed books, new scans, etc.).
What power-users are saying about digitalarkivets new service for-scanned churchbooks-: why the interface matters
The forum discussion is useful because it captures real research habits—the “old ways” that are efficient for experienced genealogists.
1) Keyboard behavior and navigation “muscle memory”
One user notes that in the old viewer it was possible to move around within the scanned image using arrow keys, reducing the need for clicking and dragging. In Digitalarkivets new service for scanned church books, panning and zoom behavior differs, and users describe it as heavier and less intuitive.
Nasjonalarkivet replies that Shift + arrow keys still moves one image backward/forward in both systems, but agrees that the feel of panning/zoom is different—and that users may or may not agree on what is best.
2) The core workflow: “the image + the citation”
This is the point that comes up repeatedly: when we open a parish register, we typically want only two things:
The scanned page image
A link/citation that we can save, share, or use in notes
One user provides an example of the kind of reference genealogists build while working:
His concern is that assembling the same clean citation feels more cumbersome in the new interface.
3) Screen real estate, especially on laptops and mobile
Several comments argue that too much space is taken by interface elements, panels, and headings—reducing the record image to a smaller portion of the screen, even though the image is what most of us came to read.
If you have comments or questions about this new layout, Comment below or send me a word trough the contact page. This is new to me too, but we should be able to find out of things together.
