Topics in this newsletter:

• Castle Amerongen digitally reunited with Linked Open Data
• Atlantis as a connecting platform for small parties
• Featured feature: Multimedia mode
• Digital thematic meeting: Atlantis and the relationship with the outside world

Castle Amerongen digitally reunited with Linked Open Data

The history of Castle Amerongen is spread across various archives, but thanks to new technologies, all these historical sources are coming together again. 

In the NDE podcast ‘Paulus and De Nijs on the road’, Heleen Wilbrink (The Utrecht Archive), Annemiek Barnouw (Foundation Castle Amerongen), and Wietse Bakker (Regional Archive South Holland) talk about their special pilot project. With an experimental website, they make historical archival documents about Castle Amerongen more searchable through Linked Open Data.

This is a huge advancement. Until now, documents, maps, and other historical sources were scattered across different collections, making it difficult to get a complete picture. Thanks to this pilot, all those information sources are now being brought together, allowing researchers, historians, and interested parties to better understand the past of Castle Amerongen.

‘The pilot shows that the era of separate collections is over,’ say the involved experts. By digitally linking and making archival documents accessible through a central location, new insights emerge and hidden connections become visible. This opens new doors for historical research and makes the heritage of Castle Amerongen more vibrant than ever. 

Castle Amerongen uses Atlantis as a collection management system. With support from the Digital Heritage Network, the environment has been fully set up to be ‘NDE Compatible’. 

Atlantis as a connecting platform for small parties

More and more historical associations and museums are taking the step towards digitization and choosing a collection management system. This is a positive development, but for every association or small museum, this is not always a feasible step. Digitization and digital collection management come with costs that can certainly pose a barrier for small organizations. Besides costs, these parties do not always have the knowledge in-house to set up a structured approach for sustainable digital management and to keep the collections accessible for the future. Therefore, there is a growing demand for joint solutions. With Atlantis, we see this solution in the form of a collaboration platform. 

Multiple organizations share the same technical infrastructure, which reduces costs and stimulates collaboration. Our collection management system Atlantis plays a key role in this. Atlantis is particularly suitable for use as a shared platform, where multiple heritage parties collaborate on sustainable collection management. Meanwhile, we are able to serve several of these types of collaboration platforms with Atlantis, from local initiatives to platforms at the provincial level. 

A great example is MyCityMyVillage – a platform where local heritage organizations, communities, and other parties work together to preserve digital collections. More than 90 organizations are now connected to this platform. Thanks to support from the Province of Overijssel, these organizations can use a professional collection management system without high costs. By joining forces, not only is heritage sustainably preserved, but it is also made accessible to a wide audience – now and in the future. 

The Digital Heritage Network is involved by starting a competency program and establishing a working group that looks at forms of collaboration and guidelines for digital sustainability.

Featured feature: Multimedia mode

In Atlantis, you will find various features to efficiently manage and enrich collections. This newsletter highlights ‘Multimedia mode’. This mode makes it even easier to combine visual material and data entry — ideal for anyone working with visual sources. When you enable multimedia mode, the screen is neatly split. On the right, you see the selected multimedia, such as a scan, photo, or other visual file. On the left, the input screen remains active, allowing you to enter data immediately while you have the visual material in front of you. No more awkward switching between screens or tabs!

This feature is especially useful for:

 • Transcribing text from archival documents

 • Describing details on object photos

 • Entering metadata based on visual source material 

You can enable this feature with the split-screen button on the input screen of an Atlantis record. If you do not see this button, please have it activated by us. Let us know via Jira. 

Did you know that you can also use this button from the search results screen? In that case, Atlantis presents both your search results and the input screen of the selected record, without leaving the search results screen. Very handy for making quick changes to a list of search results. 

Digital thematic meeting: Atlantis and the relationship with the outside world

The board of the Atlantis User Group has started the new year fresh and is organizing a digital thematic meeting for users of Atlantis on Thursday, May 15 from 14:00 to 15:30. 

During this session, the central question is: how open are we with our collections? Do we focus mainly on internal use, or do we also see the public and other heritage organizations as important partners? And what role does Atlantis play in this? 

The meeting will take place online via Google Meet. Users of Atlantis have received an invitation. If you have not yet registered or have not received an invitation, please let us know so we can forward the registration form.