The Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography is a publishing house and a scientific institution (defined in the governmental act as a public institution of relevance for the Republic of Croatia), which has been involved in lexicography and encyclopedistics since its foundation in 1950.

Its main mission is to systematize, preserve and communicate scientifically verified knowledge in the broadest span of fields and disciplines, as well to contribute to the understanding of Croatia’s natural, historic and cultural heritage, and to preserve its cultural and social identity. Over its 75-year of existence the Institute produced more than 450 volumes of various reference works (encyclopedias, lexicons, dictionaries, atlases, bibliographies, journals, special editions etc.). The Institute’s potential lies in the huge resources of created and stored knowledge, while the digital technologies transformed the ways of its presentation, as well as facilitated its distribution, accessibility and usage (Jermen & Jecić, 2018; Jermen & Jecić, 2020).

The systemic digital transformation of the Institute was initiated in 2008, when it started developing freely accessible collections of digital editions which was a rather innovative endeavour in Croatia. This poster presentation aims to give an overview of the development of Institute’s digital collections which currently comprise of approximately 400,000 articles from 30 editions available in open access.

Since 2008 print editions are being continuously digitised to become freely available to users in their original print version via the platform Portal of Knowledge (https://enciklopedija.lzmk.hr/), which was launched in 2009. This collection currently offers open access to eleven digitised editions elaborating fields of biography, literature, film, medicine, technology etc. In 2023 the new interface and functionalities of the Portal were implemented, and now it provides access also to the ongoing online editions, Croatian Encyclopedia and the Croatian Encyclopedia of Technology, as well as to the Collection of Encyclopedic Heritage, serving as the main access point to the Institute’s online content.

he launch of the online edition of the aforementioned Croatian Encyclopedia (https://enciklopedija.hr/) in 2013 was the key step to the Institute’s digital transformation. This is a constantly updated and expanded great general encyclopedia, based on the print edition published in 11 volumes from 1999 to 2009 that was authored and edited by over 1000 high-profile experts. established as one of the principal digital reference sources in the Croatian language with up to 50,000 pageviews per day.

The Croatian Encyclopedia of Technology was launched in 2014 as the first Croatian encyclopedia simultaneously published as an online and print edition at the Portal of the Croatian Technology Heritage (https://tehnika.lzmk.hr/). The Portal provides content-related data in each article, primarily aimed at linking to external sources, thus serving as the basis for interoperability with digital repositories of other cultural and research institutions. In 2023 the Atlas of the Croatian Technology Heritage was launched – a new functionality for connecting encyclopedic articles with space (Tolj Smolčić, 2025).

The Collection of Encyclopedic Heritage (https://e-bastina.lzmk.hr/) was launched at the end 2023, and offers access to twelve digitised archival editions printed from 1954 to 1996, dedicated to medicine, fine arts, forestry, agriculture, seamanship, sports etc. A new model had to be designed and implemented to digitise these editions for online publication (Kraus et al., 2024).

All aforementioned editions and collections, as well as the additional digital content (e.g. scientific journal Studia lexicographica, or more than 2 million leaflets of the Catalogue of Retrospective Bibliography of Articles) are openly accessible via the Institute’s website (https://www.lzmk.hr/e-leks/online-izdanja).

In addition to the facilitated access and searchability, diamond open access professional encyclopedias enable the dissemination of reliable scientifically verified information, that is the direct interaction between experts and wider public, thus pertaining to a specific genre or channel for the knowledge exchange between academia and society (Giménez Toledo et al., 2022; Sivertsen et al. 2026). Furthermore, it gives the possibility of linking to the digital data and collections of other research and cultural institutions, thus contributing to the networking of knowledge (Jermen & Jecić, 2018).