The "Diathek" transparency collection was developed by Prof. Dr. Helmut Brinker (1939-2012), chair of the Section for East Asian Art at the Art Historical Institute of the University of Zurich. Prof. Brinker was active at the Museum Rietberg and at the University of Zurich for many decades—retiring from the latter in 2006. He made photographs during extensive travel and on excavations, and also recorded a range of sources including art historical texts. His pictures of museum exhibitions, for example, are especially valuable for future research. During his lifetime, his slide collection was used avidly by the members of the university, as well as the staff of the Museum Rietberg, providing the visual database for university and museum presentations across almost half a century.

Diathek was digitized during 2010 in a project of Prof. Dr. Thomsen—current chair of the Section for East Asian Art and, in a collaboration with Data Futures GmbH, work on developing an InvenioRDM repository commenced during early 2022—which is now presented here. InvenioRDM is a preservation and FAIR platform for scientific data developed by an international consortium of institutions led by CERN. This repository makes Diathek publicly accessible for the first time, and also guarantees its very long-term accessibility via Invenio OCFL export.