How Our Infrastructure Connects Cultural Knowledge – The Key Facts in 60 Seconds
Discover in less than a minute how research portals connect cultural data, make knowledge visible and create new opportunities for research and public engagement.
Research portals bring together dispersed cultural data from museums, archives and libraries and make it accessible as structured information environments. By harmonising primary data and linking it with authority data, new connections and improved research opportunities are created for both scholars and the general public. All applications are based on a shared technical infrastructure that enables connected and consistent digital solutions.
The “Museums North” portal demonstrates how collection data from different museums can be brought together to form a shared digital knowledge environment. The development of these portals includes the integration and enrichment of data as well as the design of intuitive search and navigation features. Modern search algorithms and context-based relationships make even complex datasets easier to explore. In addition, we provide long-term support through hosting, maintenance and the continuous development of the applications.
Read on to discover how our portals are created and the opportunities they offer for research and public engagement.
Research portals transform dispersed cultural data from museums, archives and libraries into well-structured and accessible knowledge spaces.
We aggregate primary data from a wide range of sources, harmonise it through sophisticated mappings and enrich it with authority data such as GND and GeoNames to reveal new relationships. This creates indices and contextual frameworks that provide both the scholarly community and the interested public with clear pathways for research and discovery.
Our portals make complex content tangible, enable intuitive navigation and provide direct access to relevant information. They bring together diverse data sources into a coherent whole and create structures that facilitate working with large datasets without oversimplifying their complexity.
With more than 20 years of experience in developing digital information systems, we know how to structure and prepare data sustainably – for use that is visible, accessible and meaningful.
How Our Portal Software Integrates into Our Technological Ecosystem
Your portal applications, media guides and digital exhibitions – in short, all our solutions – are built on the same technical infrastructure. This results in interconnected and consistent applications that make content available flexibly across different contexts – whether for research, publications or public audiences.
Learn more about the technical and conceptual foundations of our solutions on the page dedicated to our System Architecture.
The “Museen Nord” portal illustrates how a shared digital access space can emerge from distributed collection data. Through automated harvesting processes, collection data from the primary systems of museums across Schleswig-Holstein is aggregated, harmonised and made accessible to both researchers and the public. The result is a central platform that not only makes individual objects visible, but also reveals the relationships between collections, museums, places and themes.
The project demonstrates how digital portals can provide cross-institutional access to cultural heritage while enabling new ways of discovering, researching and connecting knowledge.
A Practical Example – The Museen Nord Portal
For the Museen Nord portal, we developed a central research and discovery platform that brings together collection data from museums across Schleswig-Holstein and makes it publicly accessible. Through automated harvesting processes, collection data from the participating institutions’ primary systems is aggregated, harmonised and made available within a shared digital knowledge space. The result is a cross-institutional gateway to objects, collections, museums and their many stories.
Why limit yourself to a single collection when cultural heritage can be explored across institutional boundaries? Discover objects from different museums, browse collections, follow thematic connections and uncover hidden relationships between places, people and exhibits. The result is a digital portal that not only facilitates access to cultural heritage, but also opens up new perspectives on the diverse collections of Schleswig-Holstein.
From Indexing to Ongoing Operations
This raises the next question: How do distributed collection data, diverse sources and institutional knowledge come together to form a digital portal that reaches people, supports research and makes cultural heritage visible?
Your portal applications are built on the basis of your collections, data sources and domain-specific requirements. Together, we develop the appropriate information architecture, design intuitive research and navigation pathways, and ensure that content, objects, people, places and events are meaningfully connected. The result is digital knowledge spaces that provide orientation and open up new perspectives on collections and cultural contexts.
We support you throughout the entire lifecycle of your digital research and engagement services – from data capture, integration and structuring to the development of your portal applications and their long-term maintenance, quality assurance and continuous enhancement. Throughout the process, you retain full control over your data and content, while we provide support wherever it is needed.
The result is sustainable platforms that bring together research, collection management and public accessibility within a shared system and can continue to evolve alongside the needs of your institution.
I. Harvesting Your Primary Research Data
The first step begins with harvesting. From primary systems such as Fylr, MyCoRe and other sources, we ingest research data into our proprietary index via standardised interfaces using formats such as LIDO, METS, MODS, EAD, Dublin Core, OAI-PMH, CSV, JSON-LD and XML. We harmonise the data, map it precisely and enrich it with authority data such as GND, GeoNames and VIAF. Temporal information, events and georeferences are taken into account and prepared for search, filtering and contextualisation.
Full texts derived from digitised materials are processed on the basis of TEI projections to enable structured content analysis and discovery. Controlled vocabularies and harmonised subject terms form the basis for alphabetical and hierarchical facets, allowing even complex content to be navigated quickly and used efficiently.
II. Development of the Portal Application
In parallel with harvesting, we begin the second step: we develop your portals and applications iteratively – step by step, always with the goal in mind that your users can find information immediately, whether they are experts or have no prior knowledge of the data. Every adjustment and every new feature is guided by this principle, ensuring that your target audience can efficiently access and explore the data.
Precise and fuzzy search algorithms, supported by intelligent weighting, bring the most relevant results directly into focus. Faceted search, context-based navigation and dynamic suggestions guide users safely through even complex datasets. Your portals grow with your requirements, remain intuitive to use and ensure that your content is structured, transparent and purposefully usable.
III. Maintenance, Care and Continuous Updates
Beyond that, we provide long-term hosting, maintenance, support and continuous updates for your portals – even after the solutions have been handed over to your institution. This keeps your applications up to date, reliable and high-performing at all times. We ensure that your data is continuously maintained, new content is integrated and functionalities are adapted so your users always have access to the latest information.
And now – discover the platform behind the portals
The following demonstration portal takes a different approach from the “Museen Nord” example. Its focus is not on collections or scholarly content themselves, but on the technical and conceptual capabilities of the platform.
Please bear with us if the presented content does not always follow a strict academic context. In this demonstration environment, we deliberately prioritise functionality over content. Objects, datasets and relationships primarily serve to make search capabilities, navigation concepts and different forms of presentation visible.
Explore search and filter functions, discover relationships between objects, people and places, and test different ways of navigating through the data. This provides a direct impression of how portals structure, connect and make information accessible – and what possibilities are available for your own projects.
