The Portal
The Andvari Portal, the objective and final outcome of our international collaborative project, will provide integrated access to various collections and databases of northern European art and artifacts of the early medieval period (4th–12th centuries).
The Portal (still in development) will include the following features:
- To fully utilize existing resources and to avoid duplicating already accessible data, current databases and digital museum catalogues of partnering institutions and individuals will be incorporated through linked data and queried through an aggregate search engine.
- To move beyond preconceived patterns of searching, the Portal will use semantic search and prompt keywords based on user behavior and linguistic associations, in addition to using standard keywords. This will allow users to discover previously undetected relationships between artifacts and overcome difficulties with disparate scholarly terminologies.
- To engage both field experts and the general public, tiered access will be given for registered users who can add new entries and provide additional information about existing ones.
The initial users and primary audience of the Portal will be scholars and museum experts, as well as database owners who wish to share their collections. As the Portal develops, it will be available for pedagogical use and the public. Users will benefit from the convenience of integrated online access to dispersed collections and from diverse search methods that will identify relationships between objects.