Cemetery Preservation: Cooperation and Opportunities

This page is also available in Ukrainian: Збереження кладовищ: співпраця та можливості.

Preserving names, burial places and the memory of people is a shared cause. OpenHeritage is a place where people, communities and institutions gather, organize and open up information about burials and cemeteries for search. The records, photographs and research belong to those who created and contributed them; the platform helps make them accessible.

This section does not start with a description of the platform. It starts with a question: how is this useful to you and to the people you are responsible for?

Our shared position

• The goal is preserving heritage, not selling access to it. Using the platform for this work is free for everyone, from a single family to a community or a cemetery administration.

• Cooperation rests on making public the information that can be published safely and lawfully. It does not mean opening up relatives' private contacts or internal working records.

• Voluntary support helps us do more, but it is never a condition of access.

• Being useful for today's work helps preserve heritage for the future. Practical record-keeping and preserving memory do not compete; they complement each other.

The OpenHeritage catalog is not a complete list of all burials and does not replace official burial records. It shows what has been gathered and checked so far, and it keeps growing.

Choose your role

1. For Cemetery Operators, Administrations and Caretakers — organize burial information, make searching easier for families and keep the knowledge your staff have built up.

2. For Local Communities (Hromadas) and Local Self-Government — preserve your community's memory and give residents a useful service without building a separate platform.

3. For District and Oblast Administrations — help communities preserve burial heritage consistently, without dozens of incompatible solutions.

4. For Civic, Religious and Local-History Communities, Diaspora and Volunteers — your research and care for a cemetery can become accessible heritage instead of staying in a personal archive.

5. For Foundations, Donors, Patrons and Business — your support turns into preserved names and open information that everyone can use.

Shared explainers

• What Is Free and Why Support Is Needed? — how free use of the platform differs from the resources needed for field trips, scanning and development.

• Open Burial Records Are Not Open Family Files — what is public and what never belongs in open search or exports.

• How to Start When Data Is Incomplete or Scattered Across Formats? — a book, a spreadsheet, a folder of photos or a list can all be a starting point.

• How to Ensure Accuracy and Correct Mistakes? — how to tell sources apart, mark uncertainty and correct mistakes.

From a photograph to a name

You help preserve the photographs; the community and AI help preserve the names. On OpenHeritage, volunteers work together with artificial intelligence to transcribe inscriptions from burial photographs, and every transcription goes through a double check. Step by step, names, dates and other inscriptions become information that can be found through search.

Read more: From a Photograph to a Name That Can Be Found.

What is free

Search, cemetery and memorial pages, adding a cemetery, uploading memorial photos, volunteer tasks and the printable cemetery poster with a QR code are free for everyone. Resources are needed for field trips, scanning, checking data and developing tools — see What Is Free and Why Support Is Needed?.

All pages in this section

1. For Cemetery Operators, Administrations and Caretakers

2. For Local Communities (Hromadas) and Local Self-Government

3. For District and Oblast Administrations

4. For Civic, Religious and Local-History Communities, Diaspora and Volunteers

5. For Foundations, Donors, Patrons and Business

6. What Is Free and Why Support Is Needed?

7. Open Burial Records Are Not Open Family Files

8. How to Start When Data Is Incomplete or Scattered Across Formats?

9. How to Ensure Accuracy and Correct Mistakes?

10. From a Photograph to a Name That Can Be Found

Other useful sections

• Burial Data and Requests — in Ukrainian: why burial information may be public and how to report a mistake, a privacy problem or a danger.

• How to Use the Platform — in Ukrainian: simple guides to search, memorials, cemeteries and volunteering.

• Terms of Use — the platform rules; the Ukrainian version is the legally binding one.

• Contacts — other ways to reach us.

Write to us

Write to us to organize the collection of materials, join the transcription work or support it — the address is support@openheritage.online, subject "Cemetery preservation: cooperation". For a first message it is enough to say briefly who you are, which cemetery or area you mean and what materials you have.