In addition to functioning as an important source for research and as a source for control groups for interpretation of research into specific groups, the HSN database serves as the basis for collecting new data. In practice this is realized through:
a) designing and maintaining a data structure for use by individual researchers; and
b) taking the database as a starting point for further research, both through increasing the number of individuals included (oversampling) and by deepening by means of recording supplementary variables for a specific group of research subjects.
Scholars thus kill two birds with one stone. Not only can they use the data already recorded, the software and expertise developed by the HSN are available as well. This expertise can also be considered an important byproduct of the data entering of the past ten years. For using its software and already recorded data, the HSN sets the precondition that new data must be added to the data set, so that they will eventually become available to other researchers too. Enlarging the database usually happens in cooperation with other research projects.
In addition to those projects that built the backbone of the HSN database, the joint projects are
- AKON - Index of death certificates
- CEDAR - Census Data Open Linked
- DUM - Germans in Utrecht in the 19th century
- DVI - Settlement determinants for immigrants and their descendants in the Netherlands, 1853-1960
- EHPS-Net - European Historical Population Samples Network
- ESM - Early-life conditions, social mobility and longevity
- GBW - Family formation and living strategies in the Western parts of The Netherlands 1830-1940
- GGR - Genes, Germs and Resources
- GNT - Giants of the modern world
- HLZ - HSN LINKS Zeeland
- HVL - Marriage certificates Pupils of Dutch Higher Secondary Education
- JDJ - Jewish Dutch or Dutch Jews?
- LCC - Life Courses in Context
- LHL - Linking Historical Lives (Linked Lives)
- LINKS - LINKing System for historical family reconstruction
- LMP - Long Term Mortality Effects of Potato Crisis
- LONGPOP - Methodologies and Data mining techniques for the analysis of Big Data based on Longitudinal Population and Epidemiological Registers
- MFZ - Geographical and social mobility in Zeeland
- MNI - European migration to the Dutch East Indies
- MOSAIC - Historical census microdata in the Netherlands
- MUT/ASG - Migration in Utrecht
- OVF - Reduced fecundity
- RAM - Living Strategies born Rotterdammers
- RCM - Religious differences in infant and childhood mortality, The Hague, 1860-1920
- RDN - Regional differences in demographic behaviour
- TTA - Textile industry workers in Twente
- VBA - On the move in Amsterdam. Mobility of the Amsterdam poor