DATA-KBR-BE: facilitating data-level access to KBR’s Collections for Open Science is a 24 month project (2020-2022) financed by the Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo) as part of the Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks, BRAIN 2.0 programme. It is an interdisciplinary collaboration, led by KBR, Royal Library of Belgium, including cultural heritage experts, digital humanities researchers and data scientists. The aim of DATA-KBR-BE is to optimise KBR’s existing ICT infrastructure to stimulate sustainable data-level access to KBR’s digitised and born-digital collections for digital humanities research. Research teams at the universities of Ghent (GhentCDH and IDLab) and Antwerp (ACDC) work closely together with the digitisation, collections and ICT experts at KBR to co-design three interdisciplinary research scenarios using thematic datasets extracted from KBR’s digitised historical newspaper collection, BelgicaPress. This report provides an update on the achieved work, intermediary results and preliminary conclusions and recommendations for the first reporting period of the project (15.3.2020 - 15.3.2021). It also outlines the future prospects and planning for the next reporting period. The collaboration with the DATA-KBR-BE Scientific Advisory Board Follow-up Committee, who provide scientific and guidance for the project is also described. Furthermore, valorisation activities, challenges including potential solutions, as well as any modifications to the project planning, e.g. personnel changes, since the initial report are also included.