With kulturpool.at, Kulturpool offers a central search portal for access to digital collections of Austrian museums, libraries, galleries and archives. Kulturpool combines a fascinating variety of digital and digitised objects, including images, video, text, audio and 3D, and makes them publicly searchable.

The search portal enables not only research, but also browsing through historical documents, photos, paintings and sound recordings.

The Kulturpool also acts as a service point for the transfer of knowledge and expertise on digitised cultural heritage and offers resources and advice for institutions that already make digitised material available in the Kulturpool or are planning to do so.

The search portal kulturpool.at is part of the ‘Cultural Heritage Digital’ strategy of the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport (since April 2025: Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport - BMWKMS) and is being implemented at the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHM Vienna). Behind this are numerous digitization projects in the individual partner institutions, which are opening up their collections digitally. They are digitising object by object with great effort and dedication. Digitization means selecting objects from collections, preparing and, if necessary, restoring them, scanning them, recording the objects' metadata - by which we mean additional information such as the year of publication or the name of the copyright holder - and entering it into a database. And we often do this many thousands of times. Thanks to this work by the partner institutions, the Kulturpoolis filling up day by day.

The historic federal museum with several locations in Austria actively pursues the opening of its extensive collection (Open Science). To this end, the diverse objects are digitised using various methods. The result of this process is not only to obtain data and display objects digitally, but also to make the associated knowledge findable, accessible, reusable and combinable (FAIR principles). By establishing the Kulturpool at the NHM Vienna, it benefits from the expertise and experience in handling diverse cultural data and its digitisation.

Kulturpool compiles (aggregation) data from cultural institutions such as museums, archives, galleries and libraries from all over Austria and makes it available on the central search portal kulturpool.at. As a centre of excellence for the digitisation of cultural heritage, Kulturpool also offers various services such as advice and technical support for connecting institutions to Kulturpool. This includes a comprehensive knowledge database that collects information on digitisation, rights and licences, metadata and data exchange issues (in German only).

Webinars with experts and consultation appointments in the form of online cafés with the Kulturpool team take place at regular intervals. With annual event formats for stakeholders and providers, Kulturpool also offers a platform for personal exchange and debate on current topics. In cooperation with institutions and interested parties, articles about digitized material and its history are also published. In this way, Kulturpool makes the wide range of digitally available cultural heritage in Austria visible.

Bringing together cultural heritage data from different institutions adds enormous value to our society: researchers, students and the media, for example, gain quick and easy access to a wide range of reliable sources. Creatives, hobbyists and so-called ‘culture snackers’ will find boundless inspiration from centuries of cultural history in the Kulturpool.

The Kulturpool is open to anyone seeking knowledge and inspiration. The content is particularly useful for the following target groups:

•    Those interested in art and culture

•    Experts from the GLAM sector (gallery, library, archive, museum)

•    Researchers and students

•    Educators

•    School pupils

•    Journalists

•    People working in the creative sector

•    Developers

Each object is provided with a licence that specifies the conditions of (re)use. Much of the content is available free of copyright under ‘public domain’, which facilitates its use for media and educational purposes without legal problems. This means that images or audio files can be used in articles or teaching materials without any problems – a rare advantage in the often restrictive world of image rights.

See for yourself the diversity of our cultural heritage and browse at kulturpool.at – anytime, anywhere!

Not all of them, but many. Whether an object may be reused depends on the licence. This is clearly stated for each object. Much of the content is licensed under open licences (e.g. CC BY, Public Domain). Kulturpool attaches great importance to providing transparent licence information for each object. A more detailed explanation of the rights of use can be found here. For editorial enquiries, please contact us.

At kulturpool.at, you will find digitised material from a wide variety of sources. What they all have in common is that they are stored in the collections of Austrian institutions. Kulturpool brings together this wealth of data and makes it accessible in one central location. In doing so, it extends far beyond national borders. Thanks to Kulturpool's connection to the European cultural archive Europeana, the digitalised material is also made available at the European level. This makes it possible to link various national, regional and local collections in Europe and easily discover cultural heritage from different countries.

Currently (as of June 2025), Kulturpool comprises more than 1.7 million digital objects – from historical photographs and manuscripts to audio recordings and paintings. New content is added on an ongoing basis. The team, in collaboration with partner institutions, regularly provides information about new institutions, collections and objects on kulturpool.at and via Instagram (@kulturpool).

Type a keyword into the search bar and browse through the search results! Various filters and display options are available to help you refine your search results. You can find a detailed explanation here. You can also use our search suggestions to discover cultural heritage objects from different eras and made from different materials, from cookbooks and oil paintings to old maps and fashion drawings. It is also worth reading the articles on the Articles page, which presents old and new objects and collections in the Kulturpool.

A continuously updated list of institutions that can be found in the Kulturpool, including a map for overview, can be found here. These include federal museums, numerous libraries, state archives and city museums, as well as specialist archives, university libraries and memorial sites from all over Austria.

Many digital collections are only accessible via individual websites – Kulturpool offers centralised, comprehensive access and makes cultural assets visible, searchable and reusable. It enables new forms of research, education and cultural participation. As a central search portal and centre of excellence, Kulturpool is doing pioneering work for the entire cultural landscape of Austria. Smaller institutions with limited resources for public relations benefit particularly from the connection. Here, the works of great, well-known artists stand alongside objects from small local museums and little-known cultural treasures.

The Kulturpool portal is part of the ‘Cultural Heritage Digital’ strategy of the Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (BMWKMS) and is being implemented at the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHM). The development of Kulturpool was financed by the EU-Fonds NextGenerationEU.

The Kulturpool is commissioned by the BMWKMS. Content and strategic advice is also provided by an advisory board consisting of representatives from the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, museums). The advisory board is currently chaired by the Director General of the NHM Vienna. The Deputy Chair is held by the Head of the Department for the Digitisation of Cultural Heritage at the Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture. Management is the responsibility of the Kulturpool team at the NHM Vienna.

Kulturpool actively monitors developments in AI technologies and evaluates their use, for example to improve metadata or image indexing. Transparency, ethical standards and the protection of copyright and personal rights are paramount in this regard.

Kulturpool is based on open standards, metadata interfaces (such as OAI-PMH), modern database solutions and search technologies. The platform is accessible and scalable, and is continuously being developed and improved.

Open data is a central principle of Kulturpool: many objects are made available under open licences (e.g. public domain). Kulturpool promotes reuse for education, research, media and creative projects – with clear attribution.

The original data remains with the respective institutions. Kulturpool accesses the data via standardised interfaces and makes it available in aggregated form. The metadata and preview images are hosted on Austrian infrastructure in the search portal.

Museums, archives and libraries in Austria can make their collections available to a wide audience by participating in Kulturpool. Further information on the participation criteria and the connection process can be found in our knowledge database.

Do you have proven expertise in the digitisation of cultural heritage, experience with aggregation, or are you planning a project involving cultural data? The Kulturpool at the NHM Vienna is happy to serve as a cooperation partner, for example for EU projects. Simply contact us via info@kulturpool.at and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on events such as the Stakeholder Forum.

The institutions themselves decide on the scope and selection of digitised material displayed in the Kulturpool. The metadata, such as licence information, descriptive texts and disclaimers for problematic content, are also written by the institutions.

Kulturpool continuously engages with current debates and research findings on dealing with cultural data that is problematic (e.g. due to depictions of violence, unreflective hegemonic evaluations or derogatory terms). An article in the knowledge database, which is continuously updated, presents and discusses current issues and solutions from GLAM institutions both inside and outside Austria. Kulturpool provides several technical implementation options for presenting content publicly. One option is to display an individual disclaimer text.