ABSTRACT
The present study seeks to explore the research opportunities of the Dutch national web for future historians by describing the development and the unique characteristics of the Dutch national web. The Dutch national domain was founded very early and did grow very fast. The KB-NL web archive started only in 2007, due to a lack of a national deposit law. Still, the web was explored and mapped: a form of “web archiving before the web archive”. When using traditional historical methods and web archaeology, much historic data can be reconstructed. The future of the Dutch web archive will be the national registry of archived websites.
