What is Erfgoedzoeker?
Erfgoedzoeker is a reusable, flexible heritage data browser.
It is designed as a standard solution for targeted search and browsing and discovery of heritage data. See the Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed (NDE) behavior profiles publication for more information about these types of users and their needs.
As a developer, Erfgoedzoeker lets you control what, how, and when data is shown to end users through a JSON configuration file (see Configuration System).
Key Features
Search & Discovery
- Full-text search - Find heritage objects across all indexed fields
- Faceted filtering - Narrow results by categories like date, location, or type
- Autocomplete - Get suggestions as you type
- Sorting - Order results by relevance, date, or custom criteria
- Connected heritage - Discover related objects that share the same terms, people, or places
Data Presentation
- Flexible layouts - Display results as lists, grids, maps, or create your own views
- Built-in widgets - Ready-to-use components for maps, images, IIIF viewers, and more, or create your own
- Detail pages - Dedicated pages for individual heritage objects with rich metadata
- IIIF support - View high-resolution images with zoom and pan capabilities
- Source provenance - Always link back to the original data source for transparency
Architecture
Tech Stack
Erfgoedzoeker is built with Angular following the Angular style guide. We use modern Angular features including signals for reactive state management, standalone components, and control flow syntax. For styling, we use TailwindCSS with DaisyUI as the component library.
Data & Presentation Layers
Erfgoedzoeker follows the NDE vision of explicit separation between data and presentation layers:
- The data layer retrieves datasets registered in the NDE Dataset Register and provides a standardized API. NDE's data layer specification is still in development, so both GraphQL and REST implementations are supported. See Getting Started for available implementations and how to configure them.
- The presentation layer (this project, Erfgoedzoeker) consumes the API and allows configuration of how data is displayed.