Dutch Digital Heritage Network
The Dutch Digital Heritage Network (Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed) is a partnership in the Netherlands that focuses on developing a system of national facilities and services for improving the visibility, usability, and sustainability of digital heritage. The network is open to all institutions and organisations in the digital heritage field. Together we can make the most of our digital heritage and preserve it for future generations.
The Dutch Digital Heritage Network was established in 2014 on the initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. All digital preservation activities in the Netherlands are now concentrated in the Dutch Digital Heritage Network, creating a single national collaboration platform for all institutions that lends more strength to their activities.
National institutions, as strong parties in a wider field of heritage institutions with the same ambitions, take up the common responsibility for building and sustaining this network. These national institutions are: the National Library of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Archives of the Netherlands and Nieuwe Instituut.
Expanding network
A growing number of heritage organizations and portals (theme based, region based and domain based) have joined. We encourage all professionals and organisations to join this movement and take part in the network. Also, we highly value our relations with international partners, as digital heritage should cross all borders.
National Digital Heritage Strategy 2025-2028
The National Digital Heritage Strategy was renewed in November 2024. Every four years, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Dutch Digital Heritage Network review the National Digital Heritage Strategy and the agenda for the network. Are the challenges and goals still relevant? For this update, input was gathered from the heritage field in the European Netherlands and in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom.
The National Digital Heritage Strategy 2025-2028 and the agenda for the network set the course for the next four years. The basis, sharing heritage information from the source, remains central. There will be a more explicit focus on heritage from all parts of the Kingdom, and forms of intangible cultural heritage, such as oral histories and stories.
In line with the Faro Implementation Agenda, community heritage and the societal and connecting value of heritage are given greater emphasis. The strategy also focuses on better findability and usability of digital heritage, and on all kinds of facets of sustainability: from avoiding duplication of work in the network, efficient use of available resources to environmentally responsible working.