Digital collections

Overview

Facing the rich variety of digital collections it has a certain advantage to group them into several main categories. Books, archival records and images have each been put here into a category: digital libraries, digital archives and digital image collections. The sheer number of digital libraries is sufficient reason to present them separately, notwithstanding the fact that some libraries hold archival collections as well. Many digital collections present a great variety of sources. It is true one cannot separate books from documents and images. However, in my opinion even an incomplete survey of digital archives – combined with a repertory of archives – is certainly useful. A better understanding of and growing insight to digital collections for legal history will surely be reflected in their representation on this website, and thus virtual exhibitions appear on a separate page. This part of my website is updated frequently. Any constructive support is most welcome! Part of the labour for these pages is for example checking whether a digital archive contains indeed digitized archival records or is simply a sloppy chosen name for a digital library. Comments on the contents are truly valuable and important.

This page offers an overview of image collections, starting with a number of national portals for digital heritage collections; for some countries I have added a few regional portals. Commercial projects and licensed databases have not been included, the exceptions are clearly marked. The classic collections for legal iconography are present here, too, and special subjects such as the Sachsenspiegel, emblem books, portraits and festival books.

Digitization and cultural heritage is a theme at yet another page, as is also the field of Digital Humanities.

National digital heritage portals

in alphabetical order of country, with also some regional portals

  • MICHAEL: Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe – this was a useful site for finding digitized information, also for some individual countries, the one for Germany survived many yaers
  • Trove, National Library of Australia – the portal to digitized materials in Australian collections
  • MEMORar: Fondos históricos, Ministerio de Cultura – a portal for searching digitized cultural heritage in Argentinian archives, libraries and museums
  • Kulturpool – a portal of a number of cultural institutions in Austria with a search interface for their digital collections; interface in German and English
  • Kultur und Wissenschaftserbe Steiermark – interface German and English
  • Faro, support for Flemish cultural heritage – at this website you can find a compact overview of digital projects
  • Numériques – a portal for digitized cultural heritage in Francophone Belgium
  • Canadian National Digital Heritage Index (CNDHI) – a portal for searching digital collections
  • Colecciones digitales, Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural, Chile
  • eKultura – a portal for Croatian vulturel heritage; interface Croatian and English
  • Dansk Kulturarv – a platform for digitized materials from several Danish cultural institutions
  • e-Varamu – the portal for digitized cultural heritage in Estonian archives, libraries and museums; interface Estonian and English
  • Finna – the search portal for many Finnish archives, libraries and museums; interface Finnish, Swedish and English
  • Plateforme Ouverte du Patrimoine, Ministère de la Culture
  • Kulturerbe Digital – archived vwrsion, until 2022 a portal for searching digital collections in Germany, with also an overview of portals; interface German, English and French
  • SearchCulture: Greek cultural heritage in the digital space – a search platform and aggregator for some sixty institutions
  • Hungaricana – a portal for digital collections created by archives, libraries and museums in Hungary; interface Hungarian and English
  • Magyar Nemzeti Digitális Archívum [Hungarian National Digital Archive] – a portal to digitized audiovisual materials and text documents; interface Hungarian and English
  • DHO Discovery, Digital Humanities Observatory, Royal Irish Academy – a portal to digital collections in Ireland, abandoned in 2013, there is a CSV file, and information about seven projects
  • Digital Repository of Ireland – with now some 160 collections from numerous organisations
  • Cultura Italia – an aggregator and search platform for digital collections in Italy; interface Italian and English
  • Internet Culturale – a portal to digital collections in Italian libraries
  • Japan Search – a portal created by the National Diet Library, Tokyo, for searching in a number of Japanese digital collections
  • e-Paveldas: Bibliotekos-Muziejai-Arkyvai – the portal for digitized heritage collections of archives, libraries and museums in Lithuania; interface Lithuanian and English
  • The Memory of The Netherlands, Delpher – a portal to some 130 digital collections of Dutch cultural and historic institutions, including important image collections – not be confused with the website Geheugen van Nederland with just eleven themes, numerous stories, and a links selection to some portal sites
  • Collectie Nederland: Musea, Monumenten en Archeologie, Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed – images and objects in Dutch museums, images of monuments and archaeological objects
  • DigitalNZ – a portal to digital collections in New Zealand
  • Portal za kulturu Republike Srpske [Culture portal of the Serbian Republic] – a portal to digitized cultural heritage in Serbia; interface Serbian
  • Hispana – a portal to digital collections in Spain, with a searchable overview of some 600 collections
  • Memória Digital de Catalunya – the portal for the digital collections of many archives, libraries and museums in Catalonia; there is a useful overview of digital collections at Col-lecions especials des biblioteques de Catalunya; interface Catalan, Spanish and English
  • Catalònica – Agregador de continguts digitals de Catalunya, Biblioteca de Catalunya and Generalitat de Catalunya – an aggregator and search platform for digitized collections in 35 repositories; interface Catalan, Spanish and English
  • Sondera – a former search portal for searching with one action in the Swedish Libris library portal, the national archival database NAD and audiovisual documents (Svensk Mediedatabase); interface Swedish and English – service ended in 2020
  • Digicoord – a portal to digitization projects in Switzerland; interface in French and German; discontinued in August 2023 – the overview of edition projects at Infoclio can be helpful
  • CultureGrid – a portal for finding digitized items in cultural collections within the United Kingdom
  • Digital Public Library of America – this platform for digital collections is much more than only a digital library; among the primary sources sets are also subjects touching on law and government
  • Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York – a portal to digital collections in New York
  • New York Heritage Digital Collections – the portal for digital collections in the state New York
  • Global Memory Net, Simmons College, Boston, MA – a portal aiming at presenting selected digital collections worldwide

At the page for digitization and cultural heritage you can find links to a number of Dutch regional portals for cultural heritage and cultural history.


Databases for legal iconography

Let’s mention here also the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rechtliche Volkskunde. Among the tools helping iconographic research one should mention for example the Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte, now renamed RDK Labor and searchable online. Since July 1, 2023 the online database of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton is free accessible online. You can consult more at the few institutions with a complete copy (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Institute for Art History, Utrecht).

Iconclass offers a systematic classification of subjects in art, now avaialable in six languages. This website is free accessible, but in practice it is useful to get acquainted first with Iconclass viewing an image database using this classification system. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus of the Getty Research Institute is another classification system which can support your research. The Iconographic Database of the Warburg Institute in London is also most interesting. The Spanish Ministerio de Cultura offers a number of online thesauri and dictionaries for cultural heritage.

General historical image collections

– organized in alphabetical order by countries

For research in the field of art history one can find support at the following websites:

Some firms producing software to create digital collections provide overviews of institutions using their software. Sometimes it can be very helpful to look also at these overviews, shown here in alphabetical order:


Thematic image collections

A rather special place in legal iconography is traditionally given to the codices picturati, the illuminated manuscripts of the Sachsenspiegel, the influential thirteenth-century book on customary law in Saxony written by Eike von Repgow:


Emblem books form a particular Early Modern source of images. Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), himself a legal scholar, founded the genre with his Emblemata (1531). Emblems are images with a motto and a poetic explanation or commentary. Here some collections with digitized emblem books which can be searched using Iconclass. Emblematica Online points to other digitized collections.


Portraits of lawyers have always enjoyed interest. Some databases can help you to find images of them:

Festival books is the generic term for occasional publications, often no longer than a pamphlet, published around the crowning of kings, their Joyous Entries into cities, princely marriages and funerals, and the signing of peace treaties or other major events. These works convey representations of power and images of justice and law. They are also a source for legal iconography because they are often wonderfully illustrated by artists.