The Linked Open Data for the SBN catalogue

 
In 2014, the SBN technical-scientific Committee charged ICCU with the task of launching a study on issuing and accessing the SBN data according to  Linked Open Data technologies (LOD).
ICCU set up a working group consisting of ICCU representatives and experts from the VAST LAB – PIN Laboratory (Polo universitario di Prato – Servizi didattici e scientifici per l’Università di Firenze), that produced a summary report with a logical and operative schema for the output and issuing of SBN datasets, structured according to LOD technologies.
 
Another initiative related to LOD coming from the cooperation between ICCU and the “Polo Digitale” of five cultural institutions in Naples (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi storici, il Pio Monte della Misericordia, la Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, la Fondazione Biblioteca Benedetto Croce e la Cappella del Tesoro di san Gennaro) was launched in February 2015; its goals are the development of the LOD coming from bibliographical data localized in SBN by the institutions themselves, and the release of an open source and free software platform  dedicated to description, digitization and metadata production, and to the supplying of services, issuing and spreading of cultural heritage.
 
To fulfil this project a cooperation module has been developed, based both on the SBNMARC protocol and on the Unimarc export format. These two channels enables the software to import bibliographic records from SBN, also in real time if needed, and to make them available for further processings connected both to the management of digitazion processings and production of metadata for digital copies, and to the generation of LOD bibliographic datasets. These are managed through a specific integrated module.
The realization of a semantic management system integrated with the descriptive source, represented by the collective catalogue is one of  the goals of the project: a system able to support ICCU in the process of producing and managing the Index bibliographic database as LOD.

The working group is upgrading and refining the mapping between the Unimarc format and the FRBRoo (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records object oriented) onthology issued in 2015, in order to include a larger types of resources.

Such upgrade shall also concern the attributes relating to the copy (item in the reference model), so as to allow the generation of a RDF/FRBR dataset supplied with management data, starting from the Unimarc export from SBN.
 
A first significant range of records as LOD, concerning the assets already catalogued by the five cultural institutions, is expected to be issued within a short time: about 300.000 records relating to incunabula, 15th century editions, engravings, drawings, photos, old periodicals and modern publications.

Cooperation Agrement ICCU / Polo Digitale

In January 2016 the Institute and the Polo Digitale of cultural institutions in Naples signed the Cooperation Agreement (in Italianj) for achieving the following purposes. ICCU will work towards the extension and refinement of the mapping SBN records and FRBR Ontology in order to include the new functionalities of SBN (protocols and software services) for the dialog  between SBNWeb and MetaFAD, which is the platform of the project. The Polo Digitale will deliver this platform as open source s/w and ICCU will promote it to the libraries and Institutions that expect to implement a digital library system.

Papers on LOD for SBN: