Greek Aggregator SearchCulture.gr

SearchCulture.gr is Greece’s national portal for aggregating digital cultural heritage and contemporary artistic production. Developed in 2012 by the National Documentation Centre (EKT), it serves as a unified access point to diverse cultural collections, spanning prehistoric times to the present. The platform hosts a wealth of digital content, including archaeological monuments, historical manuscripts, folklore artefacts, fine and religious art, cartographic materials, audiovisual records, and literary works.

By making cultural assets open, interoperable, and reusable, SearchCulture.gr fosters learning, creativity, and innovation, contributing to a Digital Public Space for Culture. It collaborates with a wide range of institutions, from museums and archives to research centers and libraries, such as the National Gallery, the Greek Literary Historical Archive, and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The platform indexes metadata and preview images from institutional repositories, enabling users to discover and explore Greece’s rich cultural heritage efficiently and meaningfully.

In addition to data publication SearchCulture.gr also offers:

• Guidelines and validation tools for data quality and interoperability standards (metadata formats, harvesting protocols, persistent identifiers)
• Advice on use of open licences
• Semantic enrichment currently for types, historical periods and subjects, using EKT vocabularies that are linked to Getty AAT, DBpedia and UNESCO thesaurus
• Publication as Linked Data and via API
• Secure back-up storage for metadata and digital files for selected providers
• Dissemination, promotion and outreach
• Training and remote support

Technical conditions for working with SearchCulture.gr:

• Metadata can be harvested through OAI-PMH in seven alternative formats: EDM, ESE, OAI-DC, DC-DS-XML, Qualified DC (QDC), HEAL and MODS

Limitations: None
Financial conditions: None