For Cemetery Operators, Administrations and Caretakers

This page is also available in Ukrainian: Операторам кладовищ, адміністраціям і доглядачам.

Organize burial information, make searching easier for families and keep the knowledge your staff have built up.

Why this is useful for you

Cemetery staff hear the same questions every day: where is my relative buried, in which section, how do I get there. The answers often live in old books, spreadsheets and the memory of a few people. A catalog on OpenHeritage helps:

visitors find graves on their own, including from a phone at the entrance;
staff answer the same request less often and keep organized information at hand;
the cemetery keep its knowledge when the people who look after it change;
families and researchers see a photo of the monument and the burial location even from far away.

It is a supporting tool for daily work and for preserving information. It does not replace official record-keeping procedures and needs no separate software budget.

Scenarios

From paper books and spreadsheets to a convenient burial catalog

You do not need to start with a complete or perfectly ordered register. On OpenHeritage you can already:

have a dedicated cemetery page with its location, boundary on the map, description, alternative names and statistics;
link burial records to photos of monuments, transcribed inscriptions, coordinates and the plot location — section, row and place, when known;
add scanned burial books as sources, with individual pages, transcription and full-text search across page text. New sources are reviewed before publication, and it is worth checking a book for private details first — see Open Burial Records Are Not Open Family Files;
attach names, dates and notes from a CSV spreadsheet to memorial photos that are already uploaded, matched by file name. This import is available to participants with extended contribution rights, does not create memorials and has no columns for section, row and place yet.

If you have a large list, spreadsheet or digitized register, we will agree a small pilot and a way to transfer the data together — see How to Start When Data Is Incomplete or Scattered Across Formats?.

Help visitors find graves on their own

Search by first name and surname in memorials, with filters for the cemetery and for records that have a photo.
A memorial page shows photos, the coordinates on a map, a directions button and the section, row and place when they have been entered.
A printable A4 poster from the cemetery page carries a QR code and a short link to the cemetery page, its name, location and key statistics. You can put it up at the entrance or in the office. The poster downloads without signing in and is currently produced in Ukrainian, Polish and English.
The "Share" button on cemetery and memorial pages shows a QR code for that specific page.

The practical result is fewer repeated requests to staff, because people find some of the answers themselves.

Knowledge about the cemetery should not disappear when staff change

Corrections, local names, old plans and explanations of records can be kept where the next person will find them:

the cemetery's description, alternative names, external links and photos of the grounds, including plans and historical pictures;
notes and name variants on memorial pages;
the contribution history, which shows who added to a record and when.

From the cemetery page you can download all public memorials as CSV or JSONL, for your own work or when handing over duties. The download is available after you sign in; records under review and users' service data are not included in the file. We recommend keeping your own copies of important materials rather than relying on a single service.

Caring for graves without disclosing private data

A catalog needs only information that can be published safely and lawfully: names, dates, inscriptions, photos of monuments and the burial location. Caretakers' contacts, relatives' addresses and internal working documents are not needed for it and should not end up on the platform. Read more in Open Burial Records Are Not Open Family Files.

What you can do now

Find your cemetery in the cemetery directory or on the map. If it is missing, add it after registering.
Check the cemetery page: name, location, boundary, description. Send us photos of the entrance, plans or panoramas — moderators add them.
Upload photos of monuments. It is free, with no limit on the number of photos.
Where it is known, enter the section, row and place on the memorial pages you added.
Print the cemetery poster with the QR code and put it up at the entrance.
If a record contains a mistake or sensitive details, press "Flag" on the memorial page and describe the problem. The review procedure is described (in Ukrainian) in Burial Data and Requests.
Announce a photography day or a volunteer clean-up in the events calendar so that volunteers can join you.

What we can develop together

Below are possible directions of cooperation, not ready features. They could appear only by agreement, after discussing responsibility and data protection.

Possible direction: closed working access for authorized staff of a specific cemetery.
Possible direction: closed caretaker contacts, visible only to the people responsible.
Possible direction: working notes that are never published.
Possible direction: reports of damaged monuments and care tasks.
Possible direction: contacting families through authorized staff without revealing their contacts.

Important: the catalog is a supporting tool for work and for preserving information, not a ready replacement for all official record-keeping procedures. A missing record on the platform does not mean there is no burial or that a plot is free.

From a photograph to a name

You do not have to transcribe every inscription yourself. The photos you collect can become tasks for the community and AI: volunteers from different places transcribe the inscriptions, and other participants check the result. Cemetery staff contribute what nobody else has — local knowledge: which section is where, how old markings read, what has changed over time. How it works: From a Photograph to a Name That Can Be Found.

Write to us

Discuss a catalog or the digitization of your cemetery — write to support@openheritage.online with the subject "Cemetery catalog". Describe the cemetery, the materials you have (books, spreadsheets, plans, photos) and what you would like to achieve. No personal documents or relatives' contacts are needed for a first message.