The Digital Network for Collections supports Berlin’s university collections in their digital projects. Part of this support involves exploring new ways of making the collections’ holdings digitally accessible for teaching, research, and the interested public.
We see these explorations as a creative process in which we contribute our expertise and work together with our colleagues in the collections to find solutions. Those responsible for the collections know the requirements and needs best and have the necessary disciplinary expertise. The Digital Network for Collections team attempts to derive solutions from individual projects that are of general interest to the collection community.
In order to stimulate discussion about requirements and solutions and to make our joint work transparent, we publish experiments, tools, and demonstrators. These should be understood as works in progress, and we welcome feedback and suggestions for further development.
Presenting and Cataloging Collection Objects
Wikidata-based subject cataloguing of teaching images
This demonstrator explores new ways of using reference data – in this case Wikidata IDs – to better catalogue collection objects.
Presentation of results from the pilot digitization of the TU Berlin’s mineralogical collections
For collections that do not have their own object database and do not document their objects in a specialist portal, we plan to offer a bundled presentation on our collection platform. Based on the results of the pilot digitization of part of the Keller mineralogical collections at the TU Berlin, we are exploring how this can best be achieved conceptually and technically. This demonstrator is currently in an early test phase.
Demonstrator for the Presentation of 3D digitized objects
Using five cylinder seals from the collection of the Institute for Near Eastern Archaeology at the FU Berlin as an example, we are investigating how the interaction between object presentation and the visualization of 3D models in a viewer can be achieved with minimal infrastructure requirements. The aim is to make the full functionality of the advanced 3D viewer developed by the Central Facility for 3D Technologies at the TU Berlin available for the presentation of collection objects without having to host the viewer itself or integrate it into one’s own website.
Information on 3D digitization of university collection objects by ZE3D