Project description

Archivportal-D offers free, sector-specific access to archival cataloguing information and digitised archival materials (such as documents, photographs and objects) and general information about archival institutions throughout Germany. The project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) is a part of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB) and went online in September 2014. It is based on the data and the infrastructure of the DDB. The portal was developed by, and is operated under the auspices of Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg.

The objectives of the second project phase included:

1. Consolidation of the technical components and the underlying processes to facilitate the efficient integration of large volumes of data.
2. Acquisition of further archives for data delivery and comprehensive gathering of general information on archives in Germany
3. Establishment of regional archive portals as data aggregators for the DDB
4. Extensive decentralisation of data preparation and delivery processes
5. Testing of methods for automated linking of archival cataloguing information with authority data (especially GND) and establishment of authority data-based accessing of persons, similar to the “Persons“ pages of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

Results

In its role as central project coordinator for the DDB, the German National Library was tasked with interlinking the technical developments for Archivportal-D with those of the DDB. A further part of the project involved testing semi-automatic procedures for enriching archive cataloguing information with authority data links from the GND.

The main results achieved in these areas included:

1. Integration of all address data of German archives in the DDB and Archivportal-D (acquisition of data from the Ardey publishing house) and expansion of the DDB registration components to include corresponding administration functions
2. Development of self-service components for the support and optimisation of delivery, transformation and evaluation processes for the import of object data into the DDB / the archive portal
3. Adaptation and evaluation of the match-and-merge method used by the German National Library for enriching selected cataloguing information from archives with personal name authority data from the GND

Project framework

Funding body

German Research Foundation

Partners

• Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg (LABW), consortium leader
• Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure – FIZ Karlsruhe
• German National Library
• Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen
• Sächsisches Staatsarchiv
• Archives School Marburg

Duration

1 June 2015 to 30 April 2017

Further information

• Subsequent project: Specific Access to "Archivportal-D"