Searching a wealth of audiovisual archive content has never been so easy – with the updated hetarchief.be
4 Jul 2023Hidden gems, pure nostalgia or a piece of your own history? At hetarchief.be, you can browse through the rich archives of more than 140 Flemish media, cultural and government organisations. That’s thousands of hours of information, which we are now making even easier to search. With the updated hetarchief.be, we are overcoming a major hurdle on our path to an accessible digital archive. Want to delve into the past with us?
En route to a future-proof platform
You may already be familiar with hetarchief.be, as this database full of descriptions and information about a huge wealth of video and audio clips has been around since 2019. From music to performing arts, and TV programmes to propaganda films and documentation, there’s an huge diversity of content.
Today, four years later, we are further refining the discoverability of this rich collection of cultural heritage content, bringing different functionalities together under one umbrella in a completely new and easily searchable platform.
A wealth of options, all in the same place
At hetarchief.be, first and foremost you can find public descriptions and other metadata for over 1.5 million images and video and audio clips. If you spot an interesting video or audio recording, you can submit a request directly to the provider in just a few clicks. Users can now also request access to some of the copyrighted audiovisual archive content from a growing group of providers, and make an appointment to view and listen to their archival gems on site. We’ve also developed specific features for our content partners themselves, so that they too can benefit from hetarchief.be.
We have given the entire platform an optimised search window and enriched it with useful functions. Different types of users can now navigate a single platform, making it easier to keep up with new developments in the digital landscape.
One place for everyone
Hetarchief.be is freely accessible for everyone. You can now find your way to archival gems on a single user-friendly and secure platform.
Teachers can also benefit from using hetarchief.be. Alongside a wealth of content – selected by and for teachers – on The Archive for Education, you can search for additional visual and audio content at hetarchief.be. And if you find an interesting item that is not available on The Archive for Education, you can submit a request and we’ll see if we can make it available to you and thousands of other Flemish teachers and students at The Archive for Education.
The next dot on the horizon?
Now that we have laid a solid foundation, in addition to audiovisual materials we will also be able to welcome other types of content to hetarchief.be over the coming years. This includes newspapers initially, and then we are also exploring how photographic materials, such as artworks and glass plates, can find their place at hetarchief.be – ensuring that it becomes the ideal and central starting point for all kinds of research.