Since May 13, a brand new inventory has been live at https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be. As with any overhaul, it takes some getting used to, and that's especially true for the search options: some stayed the same, others changed slightly or significantly. To ease that transition we're using this blog to walk through the main search capabilities. Today we start with some general principles; later posts dig into specific parts.

Atramhasis is our online SKOS editor: it lets anyone with a browser create, edit and consult an online thesaurus (see What's a thesaurus?) or vocabulary that follows the SKOS specification.

The Geoportal (Where is our heritage located?) makes it easy for a person to see where our heritage is, and Geozoekdiensten (Geozoekdiensten: what's here?) lets a machine ask what heritage sits in a given area. But what do you do with that information next? As of recently, it's easier to turn it into your own maps.

We recently released a new version of Atramhasis, our web-based thesaurus editor. But what actually is a thesaurus, and why would a heritage organisation want one?

As promised in Where is our heritage located?, here's more detail on our Geozoekdiensten ("geo search services"). Today this is a single webservice built to answer exactly one question: what's located in this area? You send it a geometry, and it answers with the heritage that lies wholly or partly within it, as a simple JSON structure with an id, a uri, a type and the full geometrie for each object.

One of the most defining traits of immovable heritage is right there in the name: it doesn't move. Our landscapes, monuments, archaeological sites and so on all have a location, and with a few odd exceptions, they always have. Move such an object from its original spot and it stops existing as that object. So how do you find out what's located where?