The Digital Observatory that the members of this consortium envisage to build involves four main components: (1) the ODIS-database (KU Leuven), (2) the Nodegoat and Islandora powered Virtual Research Environment TIC-Collaborative (UGent), (3) the Digital Infrastructure for the Analysis of National movements in Europe (DIANE, NISE and PoHis/Antwerp University) and (4) the corpus on 19th century Freemasonry (FREE-VUB).

By upgrading these instruments, expanding their research-oriented functionalities, content and thematical scope and by creating durable technical gateways between them, their complementary use in many ongoing/new research projects will be insured. The collaborative framework in which they are positioned can be labeled as a digital observatory, combining different and interacted ICT-based products and tools developed by the partners, and tapped into many different other digital sources in the range of their networks.