Arthub Flanders

How to use Arthub Flanders

Arthub Flanders is a user-friendly search machine or discovery interface for searching and accessing records which describe cultural heritage objects preserved by the museums of Visual Arts in Flanders. These records are created, edited and managed by the museums who contribute them to this platform.

The platform enables reuse of these records by museums and third parties in their own (digital) projects.

Page contents

• About the catalogue
• Using the catalogue
• For museum workers
• For developers
• Frequently Asked Questions

About the catalogue

Arthub Flanders is a catalogue of records which describe cultural heritage objects preserved by the museums of Visual Arts in Flanders. A record is a collection of structured information which describes various properties of the object such as the title, its creator, the date of inception, physical dimensions, provenance, exhibition history,... Each property is stored in what is called a record field.

Records are created, edited and managed by knowledge specialists in the cultural heritage organisations. Records are kept in a collection registration system which acts as a central knowledge base for the organisation. These systems are connected to the Arthub Flanders platform and will frequently and automatically exchange up-to-date copies of curated list of records with the platform.

Using the catalogue

Searching through the catalogue

There are two main ways of search through the catalogue. You can use the search bar to look for particular search words, or you can use the facets in the left sidebar to drill down into the collection. Combining both full text search and search facets allows you to launch fine-grained search queries yielding relevant records.

The search bar

The search bar is available on the frontpage, and in the header of each inner page of the platform. Just like Google, typing one or more search terms will yield a list of records in which these words are present. The results are ordered by a relevancy score. This score is calculated based on how many times the term occurs in a record, and the linguistic context in which it appears.

Searching for multiple search terms without quotes will yield a set of records in which each term occurs at least once. Multiple terms enclosed by double quotes will be treated as single search term.

The search bar on the inner pages features a dropdown which limits full text searching to specific fields such as 'title' and 'creator'. The full text search will by default look through all available fields.

The search facets

The left sidebar of the catalogue features a set of facets which enables drilling down into the collection by combining terms which are defined in closed vocabularies. Selecting a keyword, will initiate a search query for the selected keyword in the associated record field associated with the facet. Subsequent selections of keywords will keep reducing the result set.

Each term in a facet, also refers to the number of records associated with the term. The amount of records is tied to the search context; it refers to the number of records yielded by the last performed search query, which are associated with that particular term.

Overview pages

The overview pages display a list of results yielded when you launch a a search query, or when you are just browsing. Each result represents a single record which is aggregated in the platform. A record describes the properties of a physical cultural heritage object (a painting, a statue, a tapestry, a drawing, a print,...) such as the title, creator, type of object, provenance,... Using the pagination links at the top of the list, or the pagination at the bottom, you can browse through the list.

You can sort the results by relevance, creator, year or title, using the 'sort by' dropdown. When you perform a search, each result will be assigned a relevance score. Sorting by relevance puts the results with the highest scores first.

By default, a result page will yield 10 results. Using the 'per page' dropdown, you can retrieve up to 100 results per page.

Detail page

The detail page of a record displays a set of basic properties. The values of some of these properties are links. When you click on them, you will trigger a search for similar records who have the same value for that property. Below the basic properties, you will find a box 'For developers' which contains a set of links which are useful for people who want to reuse the recorded information in their own (digital) applications.

Displayed basic properties

For developers

The table For developers lists a set of useful links which enables reuse of the published metadata.

For museum workers

Museum workers are encouraged to reuse records in the Arthub Flanders platform for their (digital) museal projects. How to reuse the records is covered in the next section. This section is limited to how to extract records from the Arthub Flanders platform and how to communicate with a technical partner.

Q: How do I compile a curated list of records?

Our goal is to create a spreadsheet which contains a list of links. A technical partner will use (or develop) software which will go through the list, open each link, download the record and process the information stored in the record.

1. Open up a spreadsheet program (Excel, LibreOffice,...).
2. Open a new, empty spreadsheet.
3. Fill out 'link' in the first cell of the first column. This is the header of your list.
4. Search the Arthub Flanders catalogue for relevant records.
5. Navigate to the detail page of a single record you would like to add to your list.
6. Scroll down to the 'For developers' box and right-click with on the LIDO XML link.
7. Select 'copy' from the pop-up menu.
8. Right-click on the second cell in the first column of the spreadsheet.
9. Select 'paste' from the pop-up menu.
10. The link should be added to the spreadsheet document.
11. Keep selecting, copying and pasting links to compile an entire list in the spreadsheet document.
12. (optional) Add titles, creators,... in subsequent columns.

Once you're ready, pass your list on to your technical partner. Depending on the context, your partner will use that list to automatically download and process the records in the (digital) application you commissioned.

Q: Can I add more records later on?

Yes. This is possible. You just have to pass on additional sets of links. Your technical partner might require you to pass on these lists as additional spreadsheet documents. Or your digital application might be equipped with a easy 'upload' functionality, automatically importing additional sets of records.

Q: What happens when I change a record?

Your requirements may include that your digital application fetches an updated version of the records in your list every so often (weekly, monthly). Your application should handle how the updated information is processed depending on what you are trying to achieve. In many cases, updating means replacing the older version of the record with a newer version.

Beware though, if your business case requires you to actively edit the records in your digital application, merging updates might become very complex.

Always discuss with your technical partner what you want to achieve and what the (technical and financial) implications and drawbacks will be!

For developers

JSON API

The Arthub Flanders platform features a straightforward JSON API.

Search queries

/en/catalog.json?search_field=all_fields&q="James+Ensor"

This will yield a JSON formatted response containing a list of results which is stored in the 'docs' property. The 'pages' property contains extra information which allows automatic pagination and harvesting of the API.

{
  "response": {
    "docs":[ ... ],
    "pages": {  
      "current_page":1,
      "next_page":2,
      "prev_page":null,
      "total_pages":7,
      "limit_value":10,
      "offset_value":0,
      "total_count":61,
      "first_page?":true,
      "last_page?":false
    }
  }
}

Single record

Switching between either the XML or JSON presentation of a record is done by changing between the 'xml' and 'json' file extension in the URL.

/en/catalog/kmska:2712_236.json

{
  "response": {
    "document":{
      "creator":["Arnó Stern"],
      "data_pid":"http://kmska.be/collection/work/data/2712_236",
      "creator_display":["Arno Stern"],
      "artwork_type_display":["tekening"],
      "period":"19de eeuw",
      "work_pid":"http://kmska.be/collection/work/id/2712_236",
      "object_number":"2712/236",
      "title_display":"De schilder James Ensor",
      "production_date":"0",
      "production_date_sort":"0",
      "repository":"KMSKA",
      "artwork_category":["Figuurvoorstellingen"],
      "creator_role":["tekenaar"],
      "id":"kmska:2712_236",
      "timestamp":"2017-11-22T17:26:55.018Z"
    }
  }
}

/en/catalog/kmska:2712_236.xml

The XML variant contains the full LIDO XML document as it is provided by the contributing cultural organisation. The JSON presentation of the document only contains the information extracted from the LIDO XML document which is needed to present the record and make the record findable in the Arthub Flanders search machine.

OAI-PMH

The Arthub Flanders offers an OAI-PMH endpoint for easy harvesting of all available records via the Datahub. The endpoint provides the records in LIDO XML format.

The endpoint is available via this URL:

https://datahub.vlaamsekunstcollectie.be/oai

More information can be found on the OAI-PMH website.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I see all the information recorded by the museums?

The Arthub Flanders publishes a record with a curated set of the basic properties which are registered by the museums. The museums record many different aspects of a cultural heritage object. A few aspects are not published because of various concerns such as copyright, confidentiality, security and privacy. Other properties, like exhibition history or provenance, might be added at a later date as capturing knowledge about a cultural heritage object is an ongoing effort.

Q: How often are records updated?

The records available in the Arthub Flanders catalogue are updated on a weekly basis. Updates include improvements of existing records, and the addition of new records.

Q: Why do I see duplicate records?

Some organizations, like the Flemish Art Collection, do not manage a collection of cultural heritage objects. As part of its core mission, the Flemisch Art Collection maintain a copy of the records originally created by the cultural heritage organisations it represent, in its own collection registration systems. These duplicated records are then 'enriched' with extra information such as translations, specific terminologies or content suitable for particular audiences.

These duplicate records are also available in the Arthub Flanders as alternates to the record contributed by the cultural heritage organisation which preserves the physical heritage object. You can derive the provenance of a record via the 'Data PURL' and 'Work PURL'. These persistent URL's identify unambiguously the record and the cultural heritage object they describe. Records describing the same cultural heritage object will have different Data PURL's but the same Work PURL.

The institution field is another indicator for the provenance of a record, but does not indicate that the institution is the owner of the cultural heritage object.