Discovering data sources in a distributed network of heritage information

The Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed is a Dutch partnership that focuses on improving the visibility, usability and sustainability of digital collections in the cultural heritage sector. The vision is to improve the usability of the data by sur- mounting the borders between the separate collections of the cultural heritage in- stitutions. Key concepts in this vision are the alignment of the data by using shared descriptions (e.g. thesauri), and the publication of the data as Linked Open Data. This demo paper describes a Proof of Concept to test this vision. It uses a register, where only summaries of datasets are stored, instead of all the data. Based on these summaries, a portal can query the register to find what data sources might be of interest, and then query the data directly from the relevant data sources.