Linked Open Data - digibis.com · DIGIBÍS is fully committed to Linked Open Data technology, ... the strategy and governance of Europeana, a structure that was expanded by the presentation

.91DIGIBÍS® Newsletter No. 11-12 January-December, 2014. DOUBLE ISSUE.

Information about enriched digitisation, software for libraries, archives

and museums and international regulations.

v.DIGIBÍS customers already have the opportunity to participate

fully in the reality of Linked Open Data and

consume and produce, themselves, bibliographicinformation adjusted to the reality of international library science.

.v 9.1

Editorial 3

I N T E R N A T I O N A LEuropeanaEDM 5.2.5 and 5.2.6 4Europeana AGM in Madrid 6Europeana Strategic Plan for 2015-2020 8Digital Public Library of AmericaConsolidation of the DPLA 10Linked DataImplementers in the report of the OCLC 11AgreementsInternationalisation of DIGIBÍS 12

L A B A P P L I C A T I ON SDesarrollos propiosSemantic enrichment in the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina 13New interface of the Virtual Library of Madrid 14AECID Digital Library 15Hispana reaches five million digital items 16Creation of microsites in DIGIBIB installations 18Launch of the Virtual Library of Malaga 19Features of DIGIBIB 9.1 20Features of “All about el Greco” 22BIBFRAME 23High-resolution and 3D viewers 24Virtual Museum Prototype in DIGIMÚS 26

E V E N T SConferences, Expos and ConventionsThe Semantic Web in archives, libraries and museums 276th Ibercarto Meeting 28REDIAL: Latin America and Europe 29Digitisation Days 30Impact Hackathon 31

NewsNew R&D&I Certification for DIGIBÍS 32

SUMARY

DIGICLICDIGIBÍS® Newsletter

Managing DirectorTachi Hernando de Larramendi

Project DirectorXavier Agenjo Bullón

Finance DirectorNuria Ruano Penas

IT Dept. DirectorJesús L. Domínguez Muriel

Art DirectorAntonio Otiñano Martínez

Sales DirectorJavier Mas García

Technology CoordinatorFrancisca Hernández Carrascal

AdministrationMaría Luz Ruiz Rodríguez (coord.)José María Alcega Barroeta

IT DepartmentAndrés Viedma Peláez (coord.)Feli Matarranz de Antonio (coord.)Andrés Felipe Botero Zapata

Julio Diago GarcíaAndrés Moreno GarcíaLuis Panadero GuardeñoRafael Roldán TejedorFernando Román Ortega

Innovation DepartmentPaulo César Juanes Hernández (coord.)

Noemí Barbero UrbanoMaría Isabel Campillejo SuárezSusana Hernández RubioMontserrat Martínez Guerra

Digitisation Department Francisco Viso Parra (coord.)María José Escuté SerranoAmando Martínez CatalánJavier Ramos Altamira

Documentation DepartmentIsabel Martín Tirado

Beatriz Pascual FernándezAlicia Varela Villafranca

Luis Fernando Méndez Prado

Sales DepartmentJosé María Tijerín Gómez

Coordination with the Ignacio Larramendi Foundation

Patricia Juez García

DIGIBÍS®

C/ Alenza, 4, 5th Floor28003 MadridTel.: 91 432 08 88Fax: 91 432 11 13

[email protected] | www.digibis.com

Legal Deposit: M-18050-2009ISSN (print): 1889-4968ISSN (online): 1989-5194

DIGIBÍS® Newsletter No. 11-12 January-December, 20142

DIGIBÍS® Newsletter No. 11-12 January-December, 2014 3

EDITORIAL

D IGIBIB version 9.1 is not only an update the of the DIGIBÍS librarymanagement software, which, in any case, is described in pages 6and 7 of this newsletter, but also the consolidation of a data model

that results in an implementation of the principles of the Semantic Web, asestablished by Tim Berners-Lee in 2005, in the five points of Linked OpenData. DIGIBÍS is fully committed to Linked Open Data technology, so that both

users accessing information coded within DIGIBIB and librarians codingthis information can clearly benefit from a wide set of information sources,databases and value vocabularies in constant growth, in terms of both num-ber and quality. In September 2014, the OCLC published a study that cate-

gorised the implementation of Linked Open Datain archives, libraries and museums. This report, which mentioned the Ignacio

Larramendi Foundation and its DIGIBIB softwareas the only Spanish example and the only exam-ple in Spanish, clarified how much LOD-LAM rep-resent a perfectly operational reality for leadinginstitutions in the field of production and use ofarchival, bibliographic and museological records. With the emergence of DIGIBIB version 9.1,

DIGIBÍS clients already have the opportunity toparticipate fully in the reality of Linked Open Dataand to consume and produce, themselves, biblio-

graphic information appropriate to the status of this matter in the interna-tional reality of library science.

Double issue of DIGICLIC

Given the extent of changes in DIGIBIB version 9.1, it seemed appropriateto give special importance to this new double issue of DIGICLIC, which fea-tures the international progress of Linked Open Data technology on allfronts, how it is included in new versions of DIGIBÍS software and, in partic-ular, in the digital management of libraries that, from where it is slowlyseeping to archives and museums.

DIGIBIB 9.1: the Linked Open Data application for virtual libraries

It represents the consolidation of a data

model that embodiesthe principles of the

Semantic Web in a single application

4 DIGIBÍS® Newsletter No. 11-12 January-December, 2014

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I n this double issue of DIGICLIC, we highlightthe most important changes that have takenplace in the definition of the Europeana Data

Model throughout 2014, which saw the publica-tion of version 5.2.5 on 22 May and 5.2.6 on 17 De-cember.Although the documentation of the changes

introduced in each new version in somewhat con-fusing, we will point out the most significantchanges in the two versions for 2014, meaningchanges that Europeana must introduce for bet-ter interrelationship and navigation of data, forbetter data management and for distinguishingthe processing it gives to data supplied byproviders.Version 5.2.5 includes new properties: • edm:europeanaProxy• edm:begin• edm:end, edm:preview• edm:datasetName.

The edm:europeanaProxy property consists inan internal use marking for Europeana to distin-guish proxies of suppliers from the proxies thatmake up Europeana. It should be noted that prox-ies are one of the methods offered by the EDM tocreate aggregations of cultural heritage objectsand their digital representations, and that thismethod can be used both by content suppliersand Europeana.One of the differences between the Europeana

Data Model and the data model of the DigitalPublic Library of America, which published itsMetadata Application Profile v.3.1 on 3 July 2014,is that the latter saw the importance of creatingclasses and properties to differentiate collectionsof digital objects from the start, not only by thesupplier of the data but also due to an objectbelonging to a certain collection, as well as thecharacteristics of this collection. In fact, the relationships of inclusion of a cer-

tain object in a specific set, in particular hierar-

chical ones, in a collection or a theme or process-ing subset are the reasons behind the most sig-nificant changes in the latest versions of theEuropeana Data Model. For its part, the Europeana Data Model has

included the dcat:Dataset class in version 5.2.5,which it defines as “a collection of data, publishedor processed by a single agent and available foraccess or download in one or more formats.Despite being similar to the dcmitype:Collectiondefinition of the DPLA, it introduces a distinguish-ing nuance. The dcmitype:Collection class (data set) is both

an information package and a collection of data. Adata set can be a theme grouping, it may havebeen generated by a certain source or process orit may come from a specific provider. You can see the reasons why it is necessary to

identify a specific data set: to create data group-

Definition of the Europeana Data Model v5.2.5.


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ings for the purpose of facilitating access andconsultation, to process and handle certain datasets differently and to maintain an auditing con-trol (such as cleansing, enrichment, etc.) or topublish them in Linked Open Data as subsets ofEuropeana. In fact, the edm:datasetName prop-erty, which is also new for version 5.2.5, allowsfor assigning identifiers to any data set inEuropeana.This change is consolidated in version 5.2.6,

of 17 December, which introduces a new name-space within the Europeana Data Model. Eventhough, as we have said, the dcat:Dataset anddcat:datasetName classes were created in theprevious version, current version 5.2.6 addsW3C Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) while alsohighlighting the dcat:Dataset class referencedocument, including it in the section of“Relevant Classes from other namespaces”.Without a doubt, this shows the importancegiven to this class by the development team ofthe standard.

Thus, we see that the Europeana Data Model(EDM) is evolving on new properties within itsnamespace, with the addition of new classes andproperties imported from other, more genericdata models with as DCAT. A more in-depth analy-sis would allow us to see how the equivalenceswith other specific data models, such as theConceptual Reference Model of CIDOC, are refer-enced. Version 5.2.6 includes changes to the com-

ments of the dc:creator property so that its use

would be compatible with the edm:WebResourceclass. This small change is very revealing of theprocess that must be followed by a common datamodel so it can be understood accurately by anyuser and not lead to misuse due to vagueness orinaccuracy. It also reflects that the progress and consolida-

tion of the processes for digitisation and creationof digital libraries, archives and museums on theInternet increasingly requires the identification ofthe author of a web resource.Lastly, we should mention the introduction of

the cc:License class, from the namespace of theCreative Commons Rights Expression Lan -guage, and the change to the label of theedm:rights label, which is defined in this ver-sion as a “Standardized Rights Statement”,while the previous version only referencedEuropeana Rights.

Data Model 5.2.5 and

The strategic lines ofEuropeana are

reflected in the updatesof the EDM

Definition of the Europeana Data Model v5.2.6.


O n 30 and 31 October, the Prado Muse-um in Madrid held the fourth GeneralMeeting of the Europeana Network.

The meeting focused on the presentation andapproval of the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan and onthe new structure and governance of the Net-work. Likewise, Recommendations were madefor the 2015 Business Plan.The hosts of the Meeting were Nick Poole,

chairman of the Europeana Network, and MiguelÁngel Recio Crespo, general director of Fine Artsand Cultural Assets, Archives and Libraries, asthe Spanish representative. For his part, BrunoRacine, chairman of the Europeana Foundationand of the National Library of France, spoke ofthe strategy and governance of Europeana, astructure that was expanded by the presentationIntroduction to Europeana new Governancestructure by Jull Cousins, executive director ofEuropeana.DIGIBÍS was present through its director, Tachi

Hernando de Larramendi, the director of Soft-ware Development Projects, Jesús DomínguezMuriel, consultant Francisca Hernández, CésarJuanes and Susana Hernández, from the Innova-tion Department, Javier Mas and Jorge Ramírezof the Sales Department, and Xavier Agenjo Bul-lón, Project Manager. During the Meeting, DIGIBÍS maintained bila -

teral relationships with representatives from li-braries from the entire network and they spokeabout potential cooperation in the field of the se-mantic web, especially with Víctor-Jan Vos, su-pervisor of Programmes, Policies and Researchat Europeana Pro.

From now on, Europeana will be governed by the Members Council.

Due to the exponential growth of Europeana,which has over 3,000 members, and with the goalof improving and reaching its goals, the Council

was created, with 25 members chosen from the47 candidates in the election. Among its 25 cur-rent members, we can mention Aránzazu La-fuente Urién, head of the State Archives Depart-ment of the Ministry of Culture. The number ofCouncil members will be expanded to 50 after theinitial transition phase.Among other things, the Members Council will

take care of prioritising the work of Europeanaand formalising the agenda of the annual confer-ence. To do this, it has a Management Boardmade up of six members.

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The new Europeana governance structure willbe revised in April 2015 and it is expected to be-come fully established by late 2017.The meeting was also useful to share different

experiences and projects related to the contentsof Europeana and to the creation of new servicesfor users among associate members. As part of the section on best practices, the

involvement of Wikipedia in the project toachieve a massive introduction of Europeanadata into Wikipedia was presented, among otherthings.

Finally, different working panels were also car-ried out to collect proposals and improvementsrelated to different topics (data quality, under-standing of the role of users as generators of con-tents in Europeana, development of content, etc.),with the extensive participation of members.

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Meeting 2014

The General Meeting of Europeana 2014 was held in the Prado Museum

of Madrid. Top left, at the centre: Jesús Domínguez Muriel,

director of Software Development Projects, and Jorge Ramírez,

International Relationships manager, both from DIGIBÍS, and

several aspects of the Meeting.


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F ollowing the 2011-2015 strategic plan, theGeneral Annual Meeting of Europeana,which was held in Madrid on 30 and 31 Oc-

tober 2014, approved the new Europeana strate-gic document, called Europeana Strategy 2015-2020.This document achieves a combination of

strategies, data models and even the workingmethod of the different professionals at libraries,archives and museums, especially taking intoaccount the final product accessed by users, whorarely distinguish the differences between theseprofessions.

“Europeana Strategy” sets the objectives to achieve during 2015-2020

The nearly essential objective of this Strategyis the management of the digital heritage collec-tion, taking two premises into account: respect ofcopyright and easy access to heritage for users.The heritage collection sometimes encounters

the issue of intellectual property, which not onlylimits digitisation and publication on the web, inthe case of monographs, published according thedifferent laws over the last 70 or 80 years, butalso the intellectual property arising from pos-session of a work. Thus, a museum may be reluctant and limit or

refuse to publish the digital copy of a work, andthe same thing may happen with an archive andeven libraries.

From Portal to Platform

The new Europeana platform will containthree levels: a central one that will contain thedata, contents and technology; an access levelwhere these data, contents and technologies willbe standardised, the implication levels will bedefined and the access interfaces will be provid-ed; and a service level where three types of

users will work: professionals, end users andcopywriters. According to the EuropeanaStrategy, the professionals category will becomposed of all those people directly related toEuropeana, the Europeana network and contentproviders.

2015-2020 Three priorities

With the goal of becoming the largest reposito-ry of cultural heritage, the following prioritieswere set for this strategic plan.To improve the quality of data. This is what

should set Europeana apart from a search enginelike Google, Flickr or Pinterest. Within theimprovement of the data, we should note the useof Linked Open Data, maintaining OAI-PMH andthe use of APIs, and adding geolocation and mul-tilingual features. A new repository architecture will be

searched for accessing digital objects that ismore attractive to new institutions and that willallow for tripling the material available fromEuropeana.Greater data accessibility To do this, strong

relationships have been established with the setof recommendations of the Europeana PublicDomain Charter, which establish precisely thedegree of accessibility of the data and, especially,attempt to define specific and well establishedprinciples so that accessibility of Europeana con-

2015-2020 Europeana

Its goal: to turnEuropeana into the

largest reliable repository of cultural

heritage

S trategic P lan


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tents is always relatively clear. Access to thesedata should also provide information for profes-sionals, so that, for instance, statistical informa-tion is always available regarding the actual use,or consumption, of the information thatarchivers, librarians and museologists publishon the web. For end users, microsites will be created to

complement searches on the site, distributing theentire set of information into a series of subsetswith their own sites, so to speak. Copywriters canalso reuse, through the Europeana portal, alltypes of informational resources, such as fortourism, as it considers that creative industriesconstitute 3.3% of the gross industrial product ofEurope and Europeana hopes to become part ofthe fuel boosting the industry.More relevance for partners, through the visi-

bility of memory institutions and the reduction or

refunding of costs, allowing copywriters to stimu-late the economy with innovative ideas and newbusinesses. However, it must not lose sight of the fact that

success also comes from the contribution to soci-ocultural knowledge and the strengthening of thenetwork in the face of new challenges.

Funding of Europeana

The document approaches how this entire pro -ject will be financed and establishes a clear bud -get. The provider of funds is the Connecting Europe

Facility (CEP). Despite the fact that the enormouscut in the CEP, from 9,000 million to 1,000 million,has forced Europeana to reduce its expenses byexactly the same proportion, everything is expect-ed to operate with 10 million euros.


T he Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)will celebrate its second anniversary in In-dianapolis on 17 and 18 April 2015.

Renowned as an exemplary source ofresources by different organisations and publica-tions, it holds over 9 million records fromlibraries, archives and museums, as well as anincreasing number of partners and participantsconstituting the DPLA, which already has astrategic plan for the next three years (DPLAStrategic Plan 2015 through 2017).

Priorities: completing the network of participants and increasing the diversity of records

Through its participants or hubs, the DigitalPublic Library of America seeks to represent thediversity of institutions, materials, regions andtypes of records belonging to and developed in theUnited States of America.

Among its data providers, the DPLA has insti-tutions of great importance, such as the Library ofCongress, the National Archives and RecordsAdministration, the Smithsonian Institution, andthe Hathi Trust. For instance, the New York PublicLibrary has over 1 million records and theInternet Archives has over 255,000.

MAP and EDM

The Digital Public Library of America uses theDPLA Metadata Application Profile (MAP) as a

data structure, which is already in version 4.0 andbased on a reuse of the Europeana Data Model(EDM). It should be noted that the DPLA has been hav-

ing important repercussions in all Latin Americancountries, which have set a similar objective(aimed more at politics than library science).Significantly, the DPLA has had, from its

launch on 18 April 2013, an application developedby DIGIBÍS and recognised by Marca España,which allows for searching the DPLA andEuropeana simultaneously, providing access toapproximately 50 million digital objects, a figurethat increases almost daily.

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Digital Public Library of America

Its data structure is based on

a reuse of EDM

Main page of the Digital Public Library of America and part of the applications

it offers, including “Search DPLA and Europeana”, developed by DIGIBÍS.


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O n 19 September 2014, the OCLC pub-lished an international study carriedout between 7 July and 15 August this

year, on the implementation of Linked Data. The study is based on a survey completed by

122 institutions in 15 countries. It describes 76Linked Data projects or services, 25 of whichuse Linked Data, 4 of which publish in LinkedData and 47 of which publish and use LinkedData.

The Ignacio Larramendi Foundation: the only Spanish institution in the study

The 122 institutions covered by the studyinclude, Cornell University, the Digital PublicLibrary of America, Europeana Foundation, theLibrary of Congress, the National Library ofMedicine, the OCLC itself, the SmithsonianInstitution, and Oxford University; while the onlySpanish institution in these 122 is the IgnacioLarramendi Foundation, which uses DIGIBIB soft-ware, developed by DIGIBÍS. This shows theextent to which DIGIBÍS and the IgnacioLarramendi Foundation are committed to ITC toachieve their strategic objectives.

The OCLC highlights 5 points in the Study:

Two are the main reasons for which the sur-•veyed institutions implement Linked Dataprojects and services: to improve their own data, through the•use of data from other services,to provide better results to users.ç•

The four most widely used Linked Data•resources are id.loc.gov, DBpedia, Geonamesand VIAF.The two main reasons for which linked data•projects publish linked open data are: to publish data to a wider audience on the•Internet to experiment and raise awareness about•what can be done with structured datasets such as Linked Open Data.

The four largest data sets of Linked Open•Data (LOD), with over 1 billion triplets, areWorldCat.org, WorlCatWorks.org, Europea -na, and the Europeana Library.A large part of the experience obtained from•these projects is related to the preparationand management of the project itself.

This fact should be connected with the choiceof the Virtual Polymath Library, of the IgnacioLarramendi, as a case study for both the W3CLibrary Linked Data Incubator Group andEuropeana..

Implementers of Linked Data in the OCLC report

The Ignacio LarramendiFoundation (FIL)

uses DIGIBIB software developed by DIGIBÍS


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T ollowing the development of DIGIBÍS in Eu-rope as a consequence of the Europeana proj-

ect, the company has started a series of steps toexpand in the Latin American market, beginningin Mexico.Two visits to the country have been made so far.

In June 2014, Tachi Hernando de Larramendi,general director of DIGIBÍS, and Felisa Matarranz,coordinator of the IT department, contacted bothcultural institutions in the field of libraries andpotential distributors. During a second visit, which took place in No-

vember, Francisca Hernández, technical coordi-nator, and Jorge Ramírez, of the Commercial De-partment, held meetings with the chairman ofConaculta (the National Centre for Culture andthe Arts) and the National Institute of Anthropol-ogy and History. Between these visits, meetings have been held

with the following Institutions: General Direc-torate for Libraries, CENART (General Directorateof the National Centre for Arts), INAH (National

Institute of Anthropology and History), INFOCON-SULTORES, the Vasconcelos Library, Grupo de Di-fusión Científica S.A. de C. V., and the NationalAutonomous University of Mexico, the General Di-rectorate for Libraries and the Conaculta DigitalAgenda.As a result of these trips, DIGIBÍS received a

visit from Jorge von Ziegler, Coordinator of theConaculta Digital Agenda of Mexico and promoterof an initiative for the creation of the Mexican Dig-ital Public Library, after the foundation of theDPLA in 2013 and in its image, who showed inter-

est in the project presented to him and completeagreement with the regulations and standards in-cluded in it (Linked Open Data, OAI).

Conaculta Digital Agenda

We are awaiting the publication of the Conacul-ta Digital Agenda of Mexico, which will serve as aroadmap for the different digitisation projects forthe Centre. Expectations are very good because the meet-

ings held, in particular with the Chair of Conacul-ta, show hope that the project presented to them,Mexicana, can reach fruition. Likewise, later con-tact has been maintained with the INAH, eventhough not much progress has been made.

Internationalisation of DIGIBÍS

Cover of a document studying a proposal for a large national repository

in Mexico. Prepared by DIGIBÍS with the working title of Mexicana.

DIGIBÍS has madeimportant

relationships in Mexicowith Conaculta


PROPRIETARYDEVELOPMENTS

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T he Digital Library of the Royal NationalAcademy of Medicine was one of the first tocarry out the semantic enrichment of au-

thorities, in view of article 9 of the resolution of 9May 2014, of the Secretariat of State for Culture,establishing the call for submissions for subsi-dies to the bibliographical patrimony for the cre-ation and transformation of digital resources andtheir dissemination and preservation throughrepositories.This enrichment affects authority records for

subjects, persons, entities and geographical loca-tions. The step taken by the Royal National Acad-emy of Medicine not only facilitates the search ofinformation for users of its Digital Library butalso represents a homogenisation of authorities,something very important when you take into ac-count that its records are harvested by the Span-ish aggregator of the Ministry of Education, Cul-ture and Sport, Hispana, and by the aggregator ofthe European Union, Europeana, due to conform-ing with the Europeana Data Model. The reposito-ry will also be harvested by OAIster and WorldCat.Authority records for subjects, persons and ge-

ographical locations have been enriched withLinked Open Data resources from the SKOS Sub-ject Header List published by the General Sub-Di-rectorate of Library Coordination, the Virtual In-ternational Authority File (better known as VIAF),DBpedia, GeoNames and the Library of CongressLinked Data Services. The Subject Header List, thanks to the down-

loadable files in RDF/XML and MARC 21 madeavailable to libraries by the Ministry of Education,Culture and Sport has been imported into thedatabase, automatically enriching the authoritiesof the Virtual Library of the Royal National Acad-emy of Medicine. Other Linked Open Data linkshave been manually enriched.

At the level of cataloguing, this task has beendone adding a 024 field of the MARC-21 format foreach. In the Record view, the user is given a duallink: a drop-down summary with the links, provid-ed by the corresponding Linked Open Data insti-tution, and a link to the full record at the sourcewebsite.

Semantic Enrichment of the DigitalLibrary of the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina

Top: person record; bottom: geographical record.


T he Digital Library of Madrid, which can beaccessed through the URL http://www.bib-liotecavirtualmadrid.org, now has a new

custom search interface, the design of which hasbeen developed by the IT and Art Departments atDIGIBÍS, which highlights both the consultationand the display of results.The Digital Library of Madrid holds biblio-

graphic documents and periodicals, posters,maps, graphic works, etc. which have alreadybeen digitised and for which the originals are keptat the Regional Library of Madrid and other Insti-tutions, such as the Spanish University Founda-tion, the Lázaro Galdiano University and the Car-denal Cisneros Institute.The new interface of the Digital Library of the

Community of Madrid features a page dedicated

to its featured collections. It currently featuresthree collections: one dedicated to the work ofauthors from Madrid in the Golden Age; anotherone to periodical publications of a satirical or hu-moristic nature of the Regional Library of Madrid;and one with documents about bullfightingMadrid, which contains posters, monographs,press, engravings and photographs.The eighteen advanced search fields allow for

refining results efficiently. Furthermore, they canbe filtered by source library.Through the Periodicals tab, users can access

digitised periodicals, currently covering from1707 to 1983. Search in this section is chronolo -gical (by year, month and day).


LAB APPLICATIO

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Library of the Community of

Above these lines: home page of the Digital Library of theCommunity of Madrid. Top right: page for accessing featuredcollections. Bottom: periodicals library.

T he AECID Digital Library (BIDA) [http://bib-liotecadigital.aecid.es/], which aims to pre-serve and disseminate the rich bibliograph-

ic heritage that the Library of the Spanish Agencyfor International Development Cooperation keepsin paper and other media is already operational.The digital collection, with almost two thou-

sand works (1,978) and over one million(1,036,595) digital objects, including manuscripts,books, periodicals, articles, illustrations and

sound materials it holds, and which has beengrowing yearly since 2007 according to the digiti-sation plan, was spread through the virtual li-braries of the Complutense University, the Miguelde Cervantes Virtual Library and the Virtual Li-brary of Bibliographic Heritage. This was themain reason behind the creation of a digital li-brary for the AECID.To provide the maximum possible dissemination

and visibility on the Internet, the AECID Digital Li-

brary applies the MARC, RDA, LOD/EDM, ISO 2709standards, the Dublin Core RDF , BibTeX, SWAP-JISC, MODS and MARC-XML metadata schemasand the OAI-PMH protocol. This way, the AECIDDigital Library participates in national projects suchas Hispana and international projects like Euro-peana and OAIster. To this, we can add the semanticenrichment of authority records with Linked OpenData sources of the Virtual International AuthorityFile (also known as VIAF), DBpedia, Library of Con-gress, WorldCat, data from the National Library ofSpain and the National Library of France. The AECID Digital Library has three collec-

tions: The Hispanic Library, the Islamic Libraryand AECID Publications. Consultation of the cata-logue offers many search fields (title, author,subject, publication date, signature, ISBN/ISSN,type of document or digital object, and others)and allows for restricting searches by collectionor collections. The periodicals library, with an in-dependent consultation section, allows for sear -ching by date (year, month and day).



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AECID Digital Library

It holds three collections:The Hispanic Library,

the Islamic Library andAECID Publications. Digital Library of the Spanish Agency for International

Development Cooperation (AECID).

Sample authority record with LOD links.



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H ISPANA, the national directory and ag-gregator of digital objects, reached the5 million record mark on 1 September

20141. This figure has not been given the impor-tance it deserves, considering that we are living intimes where the budgets of public administra-tions have only fallen. This figure is also verytelling of the good intellectual and practical workof those at Hispana.As usual, to appreciate the magnitude of some-

thing, it is necessary to relate it to others. Thus, itcan be observed that, on that date, the 207 repos-itories harvested by Hispana were well above the122 repositories of the Deutsche Digital Biblio-

thek and the number of records represented 67%of those of the Digital Public Library of America.

The OAI-PMH protocol must be further developed

All records that make up Hispana are the resultof harvesting according to the OAI-PMH protocol,which means that, in Spain, there are at least 207repositories that publish their data in compliancewith this standard. If we take into account thatHispana itself contains 614 digital collections inits directory, it can be seen that the OAI-PMHstandard is only barely disseminated in Spain, asonly 33.7% of digital collections in Hispana havean OAI repository.The success of Hispana is based on two

methodological principles, the first one being

standardisation. As mentioned, 207 repositoriespublish their data in accordance with a specificstandard. The second one is cooperation. Througha policy of incentives and subsidies, the Ministryof Education, Culture and Sport has made manyinstitutions and, in particular, Autonomous Com-munities, Royal Academies and memory institu-tions in general, join the OAI-PMH initiative,

HISPANA now holds over

In terms of number of records, they represent 67% ofthose of the DPLA

33.7% of the digitalcollections containedin Hispana have an OAI repository



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which has, without a doubt, resulted in substan-tial improvements to the visibility and accessibili-ty of collections. The effectiveness of this principles is shown by

the fact that Hispana is the second data providerof Europeana.If it is also taken into account that Spanish uni-

versities also publish their information in OAI-PMH repositories, it becomes clear that an im-mense aggregation of results is achieved withless efforts than would be otherwise required.This cooperative methodology has clear historicalroots in the Collective Catalogue of the Biblio-graphic Heritage and in the subsidies and agree-ments that the former Ministry of Culture estab-lished with Academies, Autonomous Communi-ties and memory institutions in General.

The boost from Europeana

On the other hand, we cannot ignore the boostreceived from Europeana in the creation of repos-itories and digital objects. In her book “The Con-tribution of Spain to Europeana”, which can beread at Europeana, the platform of European cul-tural heritage2, María Antonia Carrato provides avery exhaustive summary of the genesis and cur-rent status of the entire project.In any case, and beyond the influence that Eu-

ropeana may have had, Spain should be congrat-ulated for its efforts and importance, as it is one

of the most significant countries in Europe interms of digitisation of historical and culturalheritage, as well as the managers of Hispana todate, trusting that 2015 will continue to see its de-velopment in conjunction with the EuropeanaStrategic Plan, especially as it refers to the devel-opment of the Europeana Data Model and, there-fore, Linked Open Data.

five million digital objects

We should congratulate themanagers of

Hispana to date

1 Martínez-Conde, María Luisa. The success of Hispana.Entry in the Europeana Blog of 1 October 2014.http://pro.europeana.eu/pro-blog/-/blogs/the-success-of-hispana.

2 In: Ramos Simón, Luis Fernando and Arquero Avilés,Rosario (coordinators). Europeana: la plataforma del patrimo-nio cultural europeo. Gijón, Trea, 2014. Pages 17-23. ISBN978-84-9704-840-8.

Left: Hispana homepage. Above these lines: we cansee that Hispana is rankedsecond among data suppliers toEuropeana.


L he clients of DIGIBÍS are increasingly usingthe module for creating microsites to high-light collections and projects. This is a

module of DIGIBIB 9.1, that allows for the creationof a data subset with independent presentation,where images, links, text, etc. are added, therebycreating a library within the digital library.At Galiciana, the Library of Galicia, and at the

National Defence Library, microsites can be ac-cessed from the home page. They all have a presentation of the site and al-

low for simple and advanced searching of the doc-uments they contain.Through these documents, Galiciana highlights

the digital collections of a few libraries, such asthe one of the Royal Conciliar Seminar of SantaCatalina de Mondoñedo or the Municipal Libraryof Local Studies of A Coruña, or a relevant collec-tion, such as the one of the Festivals of Galicia, di-vided among several libraries. Also, coincidingwith an exhibition, Galiciana created a microsite:ABANCA Incunables Collection. Therefore, it canbe expected for this digital library to create newmicrosites on the occasion of new exhibits or newdigitisation agreements, which can serve both tohighlight a collection and to facilitate and guidethe user in searching through it, as, within eachsite, works can be accessed from the list of titles,authors, places, editors or by origin library, de-pending on the collection that makes up the mi-crosite.The microsite of the Virtual Defence Library,

dedicated to the Plans of Engineers of the MilitaryArchive of Segovia, seeks to highlight a collectionof approximately 14,000 plans dated between1700 and 1930.DIGIBÍS also offers custom microsite design,

such as those of the Digital Library of Castilla andLeón.


LAB APPLICATIO

NS Creation of microsites in

DIGIBIB installations

Microsites of three Digital Libraries that have DIGIBIBinstalled: Festivals of Galicia, on Galiciana; Plans of Engineers

at the Virtual Defence Library; and Digital BullfightingLibrary, at the Digital Library of Castilla and León.


Launch of the Virtual Library of the Province of Malaga


D riven by the Delegation of Culture andSports, and managed from the Cánovasdel Castillo Library, the Provincial Coun-

cil of Málaga has launched the Virtual Library ofthe Province of Malaga [http://bibliotecavirtual.malaga.es/]. Its aim is to gather, preserve and disseminate

the digital collections of the bibliographic her-itage of Malaga that is not protected by copyright,to be accessed by researchers, educators and thegeneral public. Furthermore, in the future, it in-tends to link to digital repositories of other cul-tural institutions of a local or regional scope thatwish to participate and that hold heritage collec-tions of interest to the province of Malaga and, ofcourse, include the works of the Cánovas delCastillo Library, which will be digitised.

The launch of the Virtual Library of theProvince of Malaga has benefited from the collab-oration of the Ministry of Education, Culture andSports –though its subsidies to the bibliographi-cal patrimony for the creation and transformationof digital resources and their dissemination andpreservation through repositories– in the acquisi-tion of a metadata and digital object managementsystem with an OAI-PMH repository, developed byDIGIBÍS. This application incorporates the stan-dards recommended by the European Union ap-plicable to projects of this type: MARC and MARC-XML, LOD-EDM, ISO 2709, Dublin Core RDF,SWAP-JISC, MODS, which allows the Virtual Li-brary of the Province of Malaga to be incorporatedinto projects like Hispana and Europeana, therebyobtaining greater disseminaiton.The Virtual Library of the Province of Malaga

currently has a total of 14,614 works, includingbooks, periodicals, articles, manuscripts, maps,illustrations, photographs, and 62,464 digital ob-jects, 49,264 of which allow for free text searchesthanks to character recognition.The initial collection that makes up the Virtual

Library includes the Photographic Archive of theTemboury Legacy, the Federico Muñoz Archive andpart of the Old Collection of the Cánovas del Castil-lo Library. In the “Collections” section, each collec-tion can be browsed and its works can be viewed. The main page also gives access to simple and

advanced searching –with fields such as title, au-thor, editor, series, notes, signature, subject, typeof document or digital– and the list of titles, au-thors and collaborators, editors, locations andsubjects. It should be noted that the section on “Malaga

personalities”, which covers 23 renowned authorsfrom the province, with links to their respectiveauthority records, enriched with Linked OpenData (LOD), Wikipedia and the website containingtheir works or parts of it.

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T he new version of DIGIBIB, 9.1, includesnew features and improves others thatwere already part of this renowned appli-

cation developed by DIGIBÍS for digital librarymanagement and that contributes so much to thefact that its data represent a very high percent-age of those that make up Hispana and Euro-peana.

BASIC PRODUCT

Administration module• New Web Control Panel with improved designand distribution of features: Web Cataloguing,Content Manager, Administration, Themed Ar-eas and Tools.

Cataloguing Module• Update 19 MARC 21.• RDA Updates

Inclusion of all the elements created in•Update 19 for RDA cataloguing in all types ofrecords (bibliographic, copies and authori-ties). Visualisation of all elements created in•Update 19 for RDA cataloguing in all types ofrecords.Export of all RDA elements created in Update•19 in all formats.Automatic transformation of RDA elements•created in Update 19 in metadata schemes.Adaptation of MARC records to RDA records•using the “Quick edit” tool

Management Module for Groups of Multimedia Objects• NEnhanced edition of the information of multi-media objects: more validations, access withfewer clicks.

• New report on the number of downloads of mul-timedia objects from the Web, including EPUBand MOBI.

Web consultation module• New standard design.• Adaptation of cookies-consent policy on thewebsite pursuant to European regulations.

• Improvement in the generation of bibliographicreferences in BibTeX format for their subse-quent integration into reference managementprograms.

• Inability to view groups of multimedia objectsnot linked to records, preventing rights man-agement issues.

• Addition of new optional RDA 33X fields to thesection of bibliographic, copy and authorityrecords.

• Improvements in the generation of links to dig-ital objects, both internal and external, withoutthe need to open external viewers in a modelframe.


LAB APPLICATIO

NS Features of DIGIBIB

Home page of the DIGIBIB demo. Free access for testing.

• Improved support for ALTO files not includingthe position of terms in the <String> ele-ments.

• Improvements in download statistics: down-loads are recorded for all types of digital ob-jects, including eBooks (ePub and MOBI).

• Improvements in the management of large PDFfiles, preventing performance issues when in-dexing or marking texts.

• Improvements in the navigation of Author-Titlerecords.

• Ability to navigate through subfields startingwith http, https and/or www.

“My library” module• Registration of users in the Library without theintervention of its administrator.

• Ability to save access and browsing data for auser in the Library, organising all the informa-tion under a section called “My library”:

Content Management Module (CMS)• Ability to embed <iframe> elements to embedthird-party videos or content.

• Code formatting, in advanced mode, to preventdisplaying lines that are too long.

OPTIONAL MODULES

Linked Open Data.• Europeana Data Model 5.2.6, published inDecember 2014.

• Update of EDM records based on the recom-mendations of the Europeana Ingestion Team.

Web Cataloguing Module• Renewed cataloguing interface. The Summarytab is eliminated.

• New configuration of the summary that allowsfor quick consultation.

• New record visualisation screen:“Back” option to return to the summary.•

New “Back” and “Forward” options to go from•one record to another one.

• New feature to paginate groups of digitalobjects automatically.

UNICODE standard support• Adaptation of all features of the cataloguingmodule and consultation Web interface to man-age all types of UNICODE records, both withinthe client program and website.

Microsite managerfor bibliographic records• Ability to create a carousel of images to repre-sent the most noteworthy works in themicrosite.

• Ability to display the microsite in the Featuredsection of the presentation or a page accessiblefrom the main menu.

Microsite manager for authority records.• Ability to define a microsite based on authori-ties:Set-up of a microsite from authority records.•Search of authority records within the•microsite.Inclusion of a list of authorities (persons,•institutions, conferences and titles) generat-ed from the authorities belonging to themicrosite.

• Create a carousel of images to represent themost noteworthy works.

Advanced multimedia object viewers.• New multimedia object viewers.

DIGIBIB APP• DIGIBIB App for Android and iOS (Apple) mobiledevices.


9.1PROPRIETARY

DEVELOPMENTS

LAB APPLICATIO

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“A ll about el Greco” is the first web cat-alogue created with DIGIMÚS, a man-agement system developed by DI-

GIBÍS for the online cataloguing, harvesting andvisualisation of the digital collections of a muse-um, historic site or temporary exhibit. “All aboutel Greco” is an example of the options and fea-tures that can be achieved with this application.Thanks to its compliance with Lightweight In-

formation Describing Objects (LIDO), establishedby the ICOM, and the Europeana Data Model(EDM), as well as the OAI protocol –through DublinCore metadata– and Linked Open Data and SimpleKnowledge Organization System (SKOS) models,“All about el Greco” is adapted to the latest stan-dards at the European and international levels andhis works can be harvested and displayed by ag-gregators such as Hispana and Europeana, as wellas identified by search engines such as Google.

Adaptation to all European standards

The responsive and adaptive design ofDIGIMÚS can be adapted to any device. Throughits bilingual interface, in Spanish and English,DIGIMÚS also allows for multilingual description(for instance, when we incorporate a record of awork from a foreign institution in our catalogue).

Visual and attractive

Website searches are enriched with the Euro-peana and the Digital Public Library of America(DPLA) APIs, which are performed on both simul-taneously and automatically through the interfaceitself. This expands results significantly. The information of the work appears grouped into

different sections: digital objects (image, sound,video, etc.), the image of which can be viewed inhigh-resolution viewers, allowing for observing eventhe smallest details of each work, and in 3D; the cat-

aloguing of the object (description, creation data,measurements, etc.) and the location, which showsthe location of the work and includes access toGoogle Maps, while the history shows the events ofcreation, acquisition, exhibition, etc.

Maximum usability

The vocabulary of the Art & Architecture The-saurus (AAT) of the Getty Conservation Institute inLinked Open Data, imported into the catalogue,has facilitated and standardised the use of artisticterminology, in addition to semantic navigation.DIGIMÚS allows for navigation not only by tech-niques and materials but also by agents, events orlocations. There is also a timeline, accessible fromthe Chronology tab, that allows for exploring andshowing the work of the painter and, therefore, hisor her artistic evolution, over the years.

Features of ‘All about el Greco’


REGULATION

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T he Bibliographic Framework Initiative proj-ect –known as BIBFRAME– started by theLibrary of Congress almost a decade ago,

continues under development.Perhaps the most significant advance is at the

organisational level. As shown by the news, pub-lished on 20 June 2014 by the Library of Con-gress, “The Program for Cooperative Catalogingand the Library of Congress Support BIBFRAMEas the Model to Help the Library Community Moveinto the Linked Open Data Environment”, the Pro-gram for Cooperative Cataloguing (PCC) is inclu -ded in the BIBFRAME initiative, keen to cooperateand participate in the development of this newcataloguing model. It should be noted that the PCC is international

in nature, due to both its goals of universalisingthe BIBFRAME model (open and transparent, us-able in archives and libraries) and its participants,which include the British Library, George Wash-ington University and the Deutsche Nationalbib-liothek.

Expansion in the list of implementers

The PCC recommends institutions to know andbecome familiar with the BIBFRAME model dueto its consolidation as a future substitute of theMARC21 format, which already includes specificcoding for RDA. The first stage of experimentation is already

under way, through the group called Early Exper-imenters, which will serve to implement theBIBFRAME model and, therefore, assess it for dif-ferent applications.

Tight collaboration between OCLC and the Library of Congress

The interest of the Library of Congress (LOC) inLinked Data has lead to the collaboration of LOC

and OCLC. Thus, while the LOC is making an effortto accommodate RDA cataloguing rules to linkeddata technology, the OCLC has published its bibli-ographical catalogue using the schema.org modeland studied what institutions, including the Poly-math Virtual Library of the Ignacio LarramendiFoundation and why they use and/or producelinked data. (Study of September 2014. See page11 of this issue of DIGICLIC).

Progress in the metadata model has been veryspecific and drafts have been published regardingauthorities, profiles, relationships or audiovisualresources in BIBFRAME. The aforementioned implementers are taking

advantage of MarcEdit version 6, which includesnew tools such as MARCNext, which includes aSPARQL server and a BIBFRAME Testbed.

BIBFRAME in Spain

Currently, the two Spanish institutions inter-ested in considering the option of establishingBIBFRAME are the Consortium of UniversityServices of Catalonia (CSUC), which has an-nounced testing, and the Ignacio LarramendiFoundation, which, along with DIGIBÍS, has in-cluded a prototype of authority records for itsPolymath Virtual Library in its strategic planfor 2015 .

The new scope of the BIBFRAME model

The Ignacio Larramendi Foundation,

with DIGIBÍS, already interested in BIBFRAME

D IIGIBÍS is a company committed toachieving the maximum quality in itsdigitisation processes. For this reason,

when the Ministry of Defence, in its desire to givegreater visibility to the collections accessedthrough the Virtual Defence Library, entrusted DI-GIBÍS with a project to improve the visibility ofmaps and another one for the visualisation of 3Dobjects and the company started working untilachieving its complete development. It is now in-cluded as part of its services.

Three new viewers

High-resolution digitisation and software pro-cessing has allowed for images to be viewed at a

very high resolution using the DIGIBIB, DIGIARCHand DIGIMÚS programs. In this way, materials, such as maps and man-

uscripts in particular, can be zoomed in untilreaching a very clear and detailed image of thedigitised object.It is important to point out that these are pro-

prietary modules included in the general DI-GIBÍS application that allow for exploring digi-tised images without the need to use a specificplug-in.The high-resolution viewer allows us to scroll

through the image using the mouse or keyboard.The zoom buttons, on the top left, are visible at alltimes, even though the mouse scroll wheel or the“+” and “-” keys can be used as well. On the bot-



LAB APPLICATIO

NS High-resolution and 3D

tom right, a thumbnail of the image shows ashaded area representing the exact portion beingdisplayed. This is an active thumbnail that can beclicked to change the area displayed.A 360-degree viewer has also been developed,

to allow for travelling across the entire surfaceof objects of a documentary interest, nearly al-ways museological, from any of its sides. Simi-larly to the previous ones, it includes zoom but-tons and a button to rotate the image left orright. DIGIBÍS has developed the 3D viewer as an ad-

ditional module in its DIGIBIB application. The 3Dviewer not only allows us to rotate or move theobject in all directions but also includes high-res-olution visualisation of any of its sides.

The digitisation of objects for 3D visualisationhas begun

DIGIBÍS has not only developed these viewermodules for multimedia objects but its digitisa-tion department has also begun to photograph alltypes of objects in a way that complies with 3Dviewers, which implies the use of digital camerasand a comprehensive set of programs. Photogra-phy sessions will depend on the characteristics ofthe object (size, structure, angles and curves, tex-ture, etc.). To ensure the best possible results, anaverage of 150 photographs are taken.



LAB APPLICATIO

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viewers

Left: several zoom levels of the high definition viewer. Below: different screen shots of the 3D viewer. These viewers are available now on our applications for the digital management of libraries, archives and museums.


F ollowing the signature of an agreement be-tween the Gómez Pardo Foundation and theIgnacio Larramendi Foundation, within the

framework of the promotion and dissemination ofhistorical, cultural and scientific heritage relatedto this institution, we have started to develop aprototype virtual museum using DIGIMÚS.Its contents, the collection of the Félix Cañada

Museum, will be developed by DIGIBÍS throughthe application of Information and Communica-tion Technologies (ICT) and according to interna-tional regulations on data exchange, ensuringtheir maximum dissemination.

Dissemination of cultural heritage: foundational goal and common practice

The signatories of the agreement, Benjamín CalvoPérez, director of the Gómez Pardo Foundation, andTachi Hernando de Larramendi Martínez, patron ofthe Ignacio Larramendi Foundation and managingdirector of DIGIBÍS, along with the Geological Engi-neer of the Gómez Pardo Foundation, Jorge LuisCostafreda Mustelier, and the Project Manager ofthe Ignacio Larramendi Foundation, Xavier AgenjoBullón, agreed that one of the next steps would bethe development of a prototype digital museum. The art collection held by the Félix Cañada Mu-

seum will thus increase its dissemination and visi-bility and will increase the number of people famil-iar with this collection located in central Madrid.

A prototype with DIGIMÚS, the virtual museum application from DIGIBÍS

The prototype digital museum will be devel-oped using the DIGIMÚS program, developed byDIGIBÍS. High-resolution and 3D-object viewersincluded in DIGIMÚS and its innovative and re-

sponsive graphical designmake it a very appropriateand suitable program formuseums and temporaryexhibits and facilitates ac-cessibility and dissemina-tion both through the In-ternet and the LinkedOpen Data application. The prototype is already

fully immersed in LinkedOpen Data (LOD) technolo-gies and, like all DIGIBÍSapplications, follows inter-national regulations rigor-ously.


LAB APPLICATIO

NS Prototipo de museo virtual

con nuestra aplicación DIGIMÚS

Top: website of the Gómez Pardo Foundation, with news of the agreement. Above, fromleft to right: Xavier Agenjo, project manager of the Ignacio Larramendi Foundation,Benjamín Calvo, director of the Gómez Pardo Foundation, Jorge Luis Costafreda, Ph.D. inGeological Engineering of the Gómez Pardo Foundation, and Tachi Hernando deLarramendi, managing director of DIGIBÍS.


CONFERENCES

EVEN

TS

L he Ramón Areces Foundation and the Na-tional Library of Spain held a conference onthe Semantic Web and Linked Data in

archives, libraries and museums on 10 April 2014. The conference announced the application of

linked data in national and international institu-tions, especially the work done at the National Li-brary of Spain, and the strategies for the future.After a welcome by the organiser, librarian and

consultant Karen Coyle delivered her presenta-tion, titled, “Linked Data: what is it, what isn’t itand why should we care?”. Lectures were organ-ised around three round tables. At the one dedi-cated to libraries, Gildas Illien, of the National Li-brary of France, participated, talking about thesemantic web at the National Library of France.He was followed by María Luisa Martínez-Conde,of the General Sub-Directorate of Library Coordi-nation, who delivered a presentation on semanticenrichment in digital libraries of the Secretariatof State for Culture, and by Xavier Agenjo Bullón,of the Ignacio Larramendi Foundation, who spoke

of the application of Linked Open Data in archives,libraries and museums from a business perspec-tive.

Semantic Web and Linked Data: Present and Future Objective of Archives, Libraries and Museums today

At the museum round table, EmmanuelleBermès, of the Pompidou Centre, spoke of the se-mantic focus of museum data at the digital Pom-pidou Centre, as well as Reyes Carrasco, of theGeneral Sub-Directorate of State Museums, whogave a presentation on the connectivity of muse-ums through Linked Open Data and Thesauri inSKOS, at the national (CER.es) and internationallevel).The archives table featured Alfonso Sánchez

Mairena, of the General Sub-Directorate ofState Archives, with a presentation on the se-mantic web in the Portal of Spanish Archives(PARES).

The Semantic Web in Archives, Libraries and Museums

Conferencesorganised

by the RamónAreces

Foundationand theNationalLibrary

of Spain

Slide of one of the presentations, with examples based on the work by DIGIBÍS.


EXPOS ANDCONVENTIONS

EVEN

TS

O n 23 and 24 October 2014, The WorkingGroup of Portuguese-Spanish Map Li-braries (Ibercarto) held the “VI Ibercar-

to Convention 2004-2014. A decade of work in theconservation and diffusion of cartography”,which took place at the National Geographic In-stitute.Important institutions, such as the National Li-

brary of Portugal, the University of Porto, the Mu-nicipal Library of Coimbra, the National Library ofSpain, the Simancas Archive and the Cartograph-ic and Geologic Institute of Catalonia, among oth-ers, were present at the event. The conventionwas divided into five sessions, dedicated, respec-tively, to: diffusion and conservation; cartograph-ical production, application to old collections; cat-aloguing and regulations; and distribution and vi-sualisation on the web. DIGIBÍS participated in the 4th session (Cata-

loguing and Regulations) with the presentation“Cartographic collections and semantic enrich-ment of geographical data on DIGIBIB”, led byCésar Juanes Hernández, of the Innovation de-partment. With it, DIGIBÍS presented the latestdevelopments in the management of Digital Car-tographic Collections.The purpose of this conference, held every two

years at a Spanish or Portuguese city, is to dis-seminate the developments of the Working Groupto the scientific community, to professional pro-

ducers of cartography, to those working in con-servation and description of cartographical mate-rials and, in general, to all users of cartographicaldocumentation. As the title shows, this specificconvention commemorated the official journey ofthe Ibercarto Group.The presentation by DIGIBÍS, as well as those of

others speakers, was published in the RevistaCatalana de Geografía, era IV, volume XIX, issue 50,corresponding to November 2014. It can be ac-cessed online at: http://www.rcg.cat/?edition=87.

VI IBERCARTO Convention

Top: César Juanes Hernández, of the Innovation Department at DIGIBÍS, explains his presentation.

Below: website of the VI Convention and the Spanish Geographical Society dedicated to Ibercarto.



EVEN

TS

O n 24 and 25 November 2014, at theMarqués de Valdecilla Historical Li-brary, belonging to the Complutense

University of Madrid, the VIII Meeting of SpanishREDIAL Centres was held, titled “Cultural contri-butions to Europe by Latin America and their re-flection in document collections”. Organised by the Spanish division of REDIAL

(European Network of Information and Documen-tation about Latin America) and the Library of theComplutense University of Madrid, the annualmeeting held two open sessions that includedpresentations about document collections anddigitisation projects related to social research onLatin America.

The meeting was intended to enhance mutualunderstanding and cooperation between centresworking with Americanist collections in Spain andEurope.As part of a tradition at these meetings, Araceli

García Martín, director of the AECID Library andcoordinator of the event, delivered a lecture onthe Americanae project, currently under develop-ment.

The Americanae project

Americanae would be based on the implemen-tation of an aggregator of Americanist collectionsat an international level, which would be carriedout through the harvesting of metadata followingthe OAI-PMH protocol. This protocol would facili-

tate the aggregation of all resources found in thedifferent institutions that make up REDIAL, as isthe case of the digital collections of Hispana,which were also mentioned by Araceli García.This would all be feasible with cutting-edge tech-nologies such as the DIGIHUB 3.0 harvesting pro-gram, developed by DIGIBÍS. In her presentation,Araceli also included the technological approachof participants, working packages and the budgetof this project.European attendees at the meeting included

Fabiola Rodríguez López, of the National Libraryof France, and Anna Svensson, of the University ofGöteborg. The Larramendi foundation was present at the

ceremony, with the participation of Xavier AgenjoBullón, who spoke of “The theme aggregators inEuropeana”, as an analogy to the REDIAL initia-tive.

REDIAL: Latin America, Europe and document collections

Goal: to enhance cooperation betweencentres working with

Americanist collections



EVEN

TS

H eld at the National Library of Spain on 19and 20 May 2014, Digitisation Days was asignificant event aimed at specialists

and people interested in text digitisation. It wasorganised by the Succeed project and the ImpactCentre of Competence in Digitisation.The meeting was created with the goal of intro-

ducing an updated view of digitisation technolo-gies for textual contents, sharing experiences in

the application of these new technologies anddiscussing the near future of digitisation. Newapproaches to the creation, transformation andexploitation of historical documents in a digitalformat were also analysed.DIGIBÍS, as a leading company in the industry,

wanted to participate in order to get to know theneeds of researchers and clients, participate inthe discussions about the future of digitisationand build new connections with representativesfrom libraries, companies and institutions partic-ipating in digitisation projects.During the event, the DATeCH (Digital Access to

Textual Cultural Heritage) InternationalConference [http://www.datech2014.info/] was

held, as well as the Succeed Awards Ceremony. The use of round tables or working panels on

issues such as intellectual property or digitisationpolicies was interesting. In addition, part of thesetwo days was used for a sample of the latest digi-tisation technologies presented by leading com-panies in the industry.

Digitisation Days 2014

An updated view of new digitisation technologies was

presented

Round tables wereformed to discuss

issues such as intellectual property or

digitisation policies


HACKATHON

EVEN

TS

E he second hackathon/workshop of soft-ware developers, organised by the SucceedProject, took place on 10 and 11 April 2014,

in the “Claude Shannon” classroom of the depart-ment of Computer Languages and Systems of theUniversity of Alicante. This workshop brought together different Eu-

ropean companies, including DIGIBÍS, to work onnew ideas to improve Optical Character Recogni-tion (OCR) of books digitised from old collec-tions.

The Succeed Project http://www.succeed-pro-ject.eu/] is a support effort of the IMPACT group[http://www.digitisation.eu/] funded by the Euro-pean Union, which promotes the assimilation andvalidation of research findings in massive digiti-sation, focusing on text contents.

National and European Presence

During the two days of the Impact Hackathon,programmers and researchers from Germany,Poland, the Netherlands and different parts ofSpain collaborated to work on open tools and so-lutions. For the purposes of work efficiency, smallworking groups were created and some areaswhere open-source tools must be further imple-mented for the digitisation of texts were identifiedin advance. A Git local repository, established from the be-

ginning, allowed collaborators to insert codesamples, prototypes or interesting projects to

share with the group over the two days. Some ofthe topics discussed were: Tesseract OCR engi-neering, the creation of XSLT style records for for-mat conversion and the generation of Debianpackages.

Unique opportunity to get to know developers from all over Europe involved indigitisation

Jesús Domínguez Muriel, director of SoftwareDevelopment projects at DIGIBÍS (which was pre-sented as the company that programmed the si-multaneous consultation API in the DPLA and Eu-ropeana), opened research on open-source OCRtools and frameworks. He made a very detailedanalysis of the situation and, finally, he suggestedthe desirability of creating a Wikipedia-style pagewhere algorithms could be gathered; it would bevery useful to share not only algorithms but alsoimplementations, without having to reinvent (orre-implement) progress already made.The IMPACT Centre of Competence in Digitisa-

tion is a non-profit organisation. Its goal is tomake the digitisation of printed texts from old col-lections “better, faster and cheaper”. It providestools, services and facilities to advance the stateof the art in the field of document digitisation,language technology and processing of texts fromold collections.

Impact Hackathon

The workshop wasattended by experts

from different European companies,

including DIGIBÍS

Jesús Domínguez Muriel at the Impact Hackathon.


EL TÍTULOEN VERSALITAS

A s a result of its annual project in re-search and development, DIGIBÍS hasonce again been accredited as a techno-

logical innovation company in 2014, through theAENOR certification in R&D&I.The 2014 project, “Consultation Interfaces of

Archives, Libraries and Museums in the DataWeb”, focused on advancing the application ofLinked Open Data (LOD) through the transforma-tion of thesauri, controlled vocabularies, subjectheader lists, according to SKOS (SimpleKnowledge Organization System) for a betteruse, visualisation and operation of theseresources.

This is an objective set by Europeana itself inits 2015-2020 Strategic Document, which DIGIBÍShas deemed essential to develop and that willbenefit all its clients without representing anextraordinary effort. The technological innovation project, devel-

oped throughout 2013, has also included thedevelopment of new tools for the interpretationand visualisation of cultural heritage data usingtime-lines and integrated geographical represen-tations on the websites of digital archives,libraries and museums created using DIGIBÍSsoftware and the integration of 3D digitisationtechnology, along with the creation of tools andapplications that allow for the visualisation and

management of digital objects in new formats:high-resolution images, 360-degree views and 3Dobjects.The investment in this project, which has

exceeded 295,000 euros, has been distributedbetween project management, documentationand innovation, programming analysis and sys-tems technicians.This effort, which is part of the corporate phi-

losophy of DIGIBÍS from its foundation, hasresulted in the renewal of the AENOR R&D&Icertificate, with the corresponding tax exemp-tions.

NEWS

New certification in research and development for DIGIBÍS

DIGICLIC IN ENGLISH

ONLINE EDITION

You can read DIGICLIC on our Website:http://www.digibis.com/digiclic.html

EVEN

TS

The project has focused on advancingthe LOD application

Documents

Linked Open Data - digibis.com · DIGIBÍS is fully committed to Linked Open Data technology, ... the strategy and governance of Europeana, a structure that was expanded by the presentation