Archivportal-D: subject-related points of access

Users are increasingly interested in subject-related points of access made available in portals such as Archivportal-D. As a consequence, there is a growing need for cultural institutions providing such data to be able to process and edit their data accordingly. Therefore, the partners in this DFG-funded project -  Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Bundesarchiv, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and FIZ Karlsruhe – are developing a method to present thematic collections of sources in Archivportal-D (www.archivportal-d.de) and enhancing the offer with the aim to create a platform for the collaborative assignment of archival data.

With the nationwide Archivportal-D, a sub-project of the German Digital Library (www.ddb.de), a platform was created from 2012 to 2017 in order to make institutional information, indexing services and digitized archive holdings available online to everyone for scientific use through a central point of access. Thus, both researchers and the public now have comprehensive access to the holdings of archives from various institutions in Germany.

The first, exemplary subject-related information that can be accessed via Archivportal-D are holdings and data from the projects „Weimar – die erste deutsche Demokratie“ (federal archive) and „Von der Monarchie zur Republik – Digitalisierung von Quellen des Landesarchivs zur Demokratiegeschichte“ (archive of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg). We plan to extend our offer with the archives of other institutions and other topics in the near future.

Central tasks in the implementation include the creation of a thematic classification for the subject area "Weimarer Republik" in coordination with the relevant communities, the adaptation of data infrastructure and processing methods, and the development of a tool for the subsequent enrichment of editing information with standard data. FIZ Karlsruhe adapts and further develops the portal software and the tools used accordingly. Information Service Engineering in collaboration with other FIZ Karlsruhe research departments develops a prototypical procedure for the algorithmic assignment of data to classification levels and a prototype is to be tested in practical application.

This project is based on Archivportal-D.

• Project term: 01 June, 2018 - 31 May, 2020
• Sponsor: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
• Project partners:
  • Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB)
  • Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg (LABW)
  • Bundesarchiv (BArch)