User-oriented restructuring of the German Digital Library portal

Since November 2012, the German Digital Library (DDB) has been pursuing its goal of making German cultural heritage digitally accessible to the public free of charge and at any time. By now, more than 700 institutions have made 45 million cultural objects available in DDB - 15 million of which are available in digitized format. The project „user-oriented restructuring of the German Digital Library portal“ aims to achieve this mediation function even better. Therefore, the books, archival materials, photographs, sculptures, paintings, pieces of music, audio files, films and sheet music - in short: objects - that can be found in DDB will be networked in such a way that all target groups can search and use this digital cultural heritage in an intuitive and low-threshold way.

In this context, cultural mediation by means of demand-oriented formats plays a central role. Editorially diverse content with participatory elements translate DDB objects and collections into narratives; holdings are contextualized and made tangible. In this way, easy-to-use and easy-to-receive offers are created that promote interactive participation and orientation in the diversity of the collections that can be found in the DDB.

FIZ Karlsruhe’s task in this project is to develop a knowledge graph and to entirely revise the DDB frontend with regard to user-friendliness and optimized accessibility.

The project receives funds from the program NEUSTART KULTUR, initiated by the Federal Government as a rescue and future program for the culture and media sector. Funding is provided, among other things, for pandemic-related investments and projects in various cultural sectors.