VIENNA, Austria — Holocaust survivors and their heirs now have a powerful new tool to look for art and other belongings looted by the Nazis in Austria.

It’s an online database of thousands of objects — such as paintings, books, medals, photographs, furniture, jewelry, sculptures — that may have been expropriated between 1938 and 1945, when the Alpine country was a part of Nazi Germany.

The items are now in museums and collections owned by the Austrian government or the city of Vienna. The origin of most are still in question, and it remains to be determined if they were actually looted.

The database, launched this month and accessible at kunstrestitution.at, is the latest such tool to help locate art from the Nazi era. It was put together by the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism in cooperation with museums and special commissions that trace the origins of artwork obtained lost during Nazi rule.

The fund is required by law to auction off items for which no owners or heirs are found and to distribute the proceeds to Nazi victims. No deadline has yet been set for processing claims.

Descriptions of about 7,500 objects have been entered into the database so far, and by year’s end, it will probably balloon to about 10,000, with more to be added as research results come in, the project leader, Michael Seidinger, said.

Specifics about each item are accompanied by a digital photograph. But to date, only some 500 pictures have been uploaded, Mr. Seidinger said. “It’s definitely a work in progress,” he added.