Step into our content partners’ wealth of digital audiovisual collections
14 Mar 2023Meet the Visitor Tool, a new interface that allows our content partners to open the doors to their digital audiovisual collections stored by meemoo. Now you can look up an image or audio clip on site! A significant step in a broader process in which we’re working towards better accessibility to digital content in the meemoo archive system.
This includes gems from more than 170 cultural, media and government organisations. Opening up this archive of audiovisual content to a wider audience is no easy task, especially considering all the rights issues. But it is being made possible thanks to the launch of the Visitor Tool: we’re opening up the doors to accessibility wider than ever before. Its user-friendly interface ensures you can now easily search and consult our partners’ digital audiovisual content on site, which could be very useful for studies and private or scientific research.
How does it work? Visitors can:
easily contact the participating partners (the content provider) via bezoek.hetarchief.be to make an appointment;
search through a selection of digital images and audio during your on-site appointment with the provider;
watch and listen to interesting clips directly – a separate request is therefore no longer required.
Amsab Institute of Social History, ADVN (Archive for National Movements) and KADOC (Documentation and Research Centre on Religion Culture and Society from KU Leuven) are currently already available to receive you. More providers will gradually be added, with six content partners already working towards their launch. Make sure you keep an eye on the meemoo newsletter to stay up to date with who is being added.
And if you’re as enthusiastic as we are, go to bezoek.hetarchief.be, make an appointment, and dive into our content partners’ collections. For KADOC-KU Leuven, you can make an appointment via their own website.
First step in a bigger process
Previously you were already able to visit hetarchief.be to search metadata for (a large proportion of) the images and audio we store for our content partners. But now it’s also possible to look up the audiovisual content that meemoo digitises or which flows into our system on site from content partners who opt in. A logical step forward, which wasn’t possible until now.
Behind the scenes, together with our partners we’re working hard to find ways to make this content more accessible. The next dot on the horizon? A new platform where we want to bring the Visitor Tool, hetarchief.be and Catalogus Pro – and later also the News from the Great War and artinflanders.be – all together under the same roof. So that you can search for and, if possible, consult our content partners’ materials all in one place. More on this to follow soon.