Open Topstukken: Infrastructured Storytelling with Linked Data for Cross-Institutional Heritage Narratives

Open Topstukken is a collaborative digital cultural heritage project that connects “collection highlights” from the special collections of two Dutch university libraries through Linked Data and open-science practices. Using the open-source platform Omeka S as shared collection management infrastructure, we selected, digitized and described 30 highlights around four themes, aligning local resource templates and FAIR-aligned metadata across both institutions. A semi-automated workflow exports curated Omeka S metadata to Wikidata, integrating these objects into an open knowledge graph. IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) image delivery and joint thematic site enable cross-institutional digital storytelling, where researchers, curators and metadata specialists co-construct narrative contexts around items. The presentation presents Open Topstukken as a case of “Infrastructured storytelling”: how choices about open standards, authority data and ETL workflows shape the stories that can be told with heritage data, and what this implies for future research-driven use of heritage collections in the digital humanities.