This paper presents annotations needed for handwritten archives document retrieval by content. We propose two complementary ways of producing those annotations : automatically by using optical document recognition and collectively by using Internet and a manual input by users. A platform for managing those annotations is presented as well as examples of automatic annotations on civil status registers, military forms (tested on 60,000 pages) and naturalization decrees, using a generic document recognition method. Examples of collective annotations built on automatic annotations are also given.