KdS-online
Switzerland's Artistic Monuments — Digitised for the 21st Century
Spanning 149 volumes over 97 years, the book series Switzerland's Artistic Monuments (KdS) is the definitive reference work on the architecture, art, and history of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It is published by the Society for Swiss Art History (GSK).
With KdS-online, the GSK is making all of this content freely available in a digital database, comprising the contents of 65,000 pages featuring over 65,000 illustrations.
This marks the launch of Switzerland’s largest humanities digitisation project, connecting the art monuments beyond the covers of the books and expanding them digitally.
Thanks to GSK's own development, it is possible to combine a georeferenced database with a bespoke search engine.
- The contents of the individual volumes are tagged and geolocated.
- Objects and people are linked to relevant information (linked data).
- The ‘tailor-made’ search engine displays all objects from the data and image databases on a map, providing new perspectives and revealing previously unrecognised connections.
- These objects can be filtered by various criteria, such as canton, location, historical period, object type (e.g. castle, church, fountain) and the names of architects or artists involved.
- The full-text search covers the entire content of all digitised KdS volumes.
The project is designed to run for the next eight years, with full digitisation to be achieved by 2027 to mark the 100^(th) anniversary of the series. This will encompass over 60,000 objects.
Incidentally: GSK members have privileged access to KdS-online.
The Swiss company acodis, based in Winterthur, is the technical partner responsible for implementation.