Involvement in Enrich Europeana+
The State Archives in Zagreb care for the documentary and archival materials that were created in the city of Zagreb, Zagreb County as well as for part of the County Krapinsko-Zagorska (towns Donja Stubica and Oroslavje and the municipalities of Gornja Stubica, Marija Bistrica and Stubičke Toplice) in Croatia. The rich materials stored in the archive are mostly handwritten, and range from the 13th century to recent history.
There are more than 10,000 due metres of materials spread through more than 1,300 archival fonds and collections in the State Archives. This makes it challenging for researchers, educators and curious citizens to know whose archival funds we hold. This was an issue that we aimed to address through our participation in the Enrich Europeana+ project.
Through the project, we wanted to present a more comprehensive overview of our archives and collections to a larger audience. The State Archives in Zagreb is one of the biggest content providers in this project, and we aim to provide more than 120,000 new records to Europeana. Those materials are a part of eight different archival funds and collections. The most considerable number of records come from the archival fond HR-DAZG-24 Zagreb City Administration, more precisely, the ration cards that were issued in Zagreb during WW2 to regulate food distribution, which number around 120,000 individual cards.
Working with the Croatian national aggregator, Ekultura
The State Archives in Zagreb was also the first cultural heritage institution in Croatia to use the Croatian national aggregator Ekultura to deliver these materials to Europeana. For every single fond and collection, a new set of metadata was constructed to provide the data. This was a significant step, because before the establishment of Ekultura, and engagement in the Enrich Europeana+ project, the State Archives in Zagreb didn't produce metadata in such a structured, machine-readable form.
Ekultura was established by the Croatian Ministry of Culture and media as part of the ‘e-Culture - Digitization of cultural heritage’ project. The project includes the establishment of a central information system for permanent digital storage and preservation of digital and digitised cultural heritage from museums, archives, libraries and other heritage institutions. The aggregator plans a crucial role in preserving and promoting cultural heritage, collecting and organising information from multiple sources to make cultural heritage more accessible, searchable, and understandable. It offers cultural heritage institutions two main services– integration with the national aggregator and integration with Europeana - which the State Archives of Zagreb used for this project.