19.05.2021
Bode-Museum
On Thursday, 20 May 2021, the joint numismatics portal ikmk.net goes live. The largest databank of public numismatic collections in the German-speaking world, ikmk.net is a collaborative project between 29 institutions from Germany and Austria, including the Münzkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. To celebrate the launch of the portal, from 6 pm on 20 May 2021, an online event featuring talks will take place.
With the website ikmk.net, on 20 May 2021, a cross-collection portal for numismatics goes live. The portal involves all the public numismatic collections that use the documentation programme put together by Berlin’s Munzkabinett, a total of 29 institutions with 42 different collections from around Germany and Austria.
With this portal, parts of the numismatic collections of the Münzkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (more than 40,000 objects), the Münzkabinett of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (around 15,000 objects), the Münzsammlung of the Department for Numismatics and Monetary History at the University of Vienna (1,700 objects), the Münzsammlung of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig (2,500 objects), as well as that of the NUMiD network of German university numismatic collections (more than 30,000 objects) are now accessible to the public. The portal launches with more than 90,000 items, all with in-depth descriptions and high-resolution images. Numerous intuitive and sophisticated search filters make using the portal not only easy and accessible, but also facilitate detailed research and output.
Use of the portal is free. Both data and images can be used for research purposes and private use, in accordance with the various creative commons licences of the different contributing institutions.
Currently, this portal provides the largest databank of public numismatic collections in the German-speaking world. For many of these institutions, this is just the beginning of ongoing and concerted efforts to make their collections accessible to the public through this databank, given that the institutions that are already involved in the project alone are home to some 1.4 million objects. Other numismatic collections that have already been made accessible online or which are preparing to do so, will follow soon. The quality of the data, including identifying information and linked open data (LOD), is demonstrated by the fact that for a complete entry for just one object – which involves up to 78 data fields, provenance research and literature review – a whole hour of work is allotted.
