Making use of a purpose-built structured database with the flexibility to capture data from a variety of different sources and jurisdictions, and enabling a productive partnership between researchers and volunteer transcribers, the Prosecution Project is a platform for revolutionising our understanding of criminal justice histories. The functionality of this database will be extended by operationalising a national, sustainable and scalable API standard that will allow data (and metadata) sharing and transfer between archives, institutions and research projects (such as Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, The Prosecution Project, Trove, Queensland State Archives, HuNI and the ALA). This paper will use The Prosecution Project as a case study to explain how Australian archives are opening up access to resources and show how it is possible for the research community to add value back to the archived material by linking their contributions to the original source material.