Ariadne Institutional Repository of the National Documentation Centre (EKT), Greece

History and Founding

The Institutional Repository Ariadne is the open-access repository of the National Documentation Centre (EKT; Greek: Εθνικό Κέντρο Τεκμηρίωσης), which was established in 1980 with funding from the United Nations Development Programme. EKT is a Greek public organisation promoting knowledge, research, innovation, and digital transformation, and has been designated a National Scientific Infrastructure and National Authority of the Hellenic Statistical System. Since August 2019, EKT has been a discrete public-interest legal entity under private law supervised by the Ministry of Digital Governance. EKT's Ariadne repository serves as the institutional open-access store for the Centre's own scholarly and institutional output.

Collections and Holdings

The Ariadne repository hosts EKT's own scientific publications, conference presentations, speeches, project documentation, and institutional publications. It provides access to materials spanning EKT's activities across research data infrastructure, digital content, scientific metrics, open access policy, and national bibliographic services. EKT also manages broader national content infrastructures including the National Archive of PhD Theses (over 44,000 doctoral dissertations), the National Hellenic Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials (ESKEP), the bibliographic database BIBLIONET, and the aggregators SearchCulture.gr and OpenArchives.gr, which together give access to cultural heritage and scientific content from across Greece.

Notable Materials Related to Journalism and Media

EKT's associated infrastructure, particularly the SearchCulture.gr and OpenArchives.gr aggregators, provides access to digitised Greek cultural heritage materials including historical newspapers, periodicals, and media archives held by partner institutions. EKT has published the quarterly magazine Innovation, Research and Technology since 1996, which is itself archived in the Ariadne repository.

Access and Usage

Ariadne is freely accessible online and supports open access to EKT's institutional output. Metadata and content can be browsed and searched through the repository interface. EKT's broader national content services, including OpenArchives.gr, support OAI-PMH harvesting from Greek institutional repositories across the cultural and academic sectors.