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{{DISPLAYTITLE:Share Family Bulletin}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Share Family Bulletin}}


This section includes the latest issue of the Share Family Bulletin. More information on the current activities going on within the various [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:Main_Page branches of the Share Family] can be found throughout this wiki website, which is the informative hub of Share-VDE and the Share Family.
This section includes the latest issue of the Share Family Bulletin. More information on the current activities going on within the various [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:Main_Page branches of the Share Family] can be found throughout this wiki website [https://wiki.svde.org/ https://wiki.share-family.org/], which is the informative hub of Share-VDE and the Share Family.


For a general presentation of the Share Family, of its mission and values, and to find out the latest news, you can also explore the brochure website https://www.share-family.org/.
For a general presentation of the Share Family, of its mission and values, and to find out the latest news, you can also explore the brochure website https://www.share-family.org/.
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* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates/September_2022 Number 6, September 2022]
* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates/September_2022 Number 6, September 2022]
* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates/January2023 Number 7, January 2023]
* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates/January2023 Number 7, January 2023]
* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates/December2023 Number 8, December 2023]
* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates/July2024 Number 9, July 2024]
* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates/April2025 Number 10, April 2025]




'''<big>Number 8, December 2023</big>'''
You can download this document at https://bit.ly/SFBulletin_n8_Dec2023
Citation: Share Family Team, ''Share Family Bulletin'' 8 (December 2023), https://bit.ly/SFBulletin_n8_Dec2023
=== Introduction ===
As 2023 comes to an end, we take a moment to look back at the achievements and challenges within the Share Family initiative during the past year. This report serves as a comprehensive reflection on the accomplishments of this year, while also offering insights into the exciting goals we've set for the upcoming period. It provides a glimpse into both the highlights of the past year and our shared vision for the future within the Share Family community.
The international reach of the Share Family, spread across different countries and bibliographic traditions, stimulates mutual exchanges and gives us the occasion to improve our processes, data treatment and outputs.
The efforts and resources devoted to the development of the initiative (both technical and in terms of cooperation and outreach) are always rewarded by the added value of working side by side with member institutions and partners in the linked data community. This co-operative approach, with time, expertise and costs shared across the community for the benefit of all members, is creating a truly global network of interconnected institutions and information resources that transcends traditional cataloging boundaries.
A useful perspective on how we carry on this family of initiatives can be found in the [https://bit.ly/SVDE-Executive-Summary Share-VDE Executive Summary]: the outline of SVDE role in linked open data for libraries is reflected on the overall approach to all the branches of the Share Family.
In this context, we also find useful to provide a comprehensive overview of the main stepping stones that have marked the path of the Share Family of initiatives over the years, described in detail in the next sections:
[[File:timeline updated.jpg|alt=|none|thumb|750x750px]]
In this extensive update are reported - among others - prominent achievements:
* the extension of the community of members and parallel pilots;
* the publication of new branches of the Share Family dedicated to specific initiatives, supported by dedicated entity discovery portals and linked data infrastructure (the portals for the BNB - British National Bibliography, Parsifal, and LILLIT);
* the involvement in the international library and cultural heritage community through cross-institutional working groups;
* the development of JCricket collaborative entity editor for shared cataloguing;
* the continuous enhancement of the system components and upgrade to a new version 3 of the technology in use, towards the support of production workflows;
* the extension of LOD Platform technology capabilities for the integration with third parties.
To cope with all this, the Share Family internal team of metadata experts and technicians is constantly working to improve the internal organisation of work and is increasingly formalising project rules and methodology to streamline development processes and achieve better results.
=== News from members, promotion and outreach ===
The Share Family linked data ecosystem comprises several collaborative LOD - Linked Open Data environments (also called “[https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:Main_Page#The_Share_Family_branches_.28tenants.29 tenants]” in Share Family jargon).
The different characteristics of each field represented in the various environments are a useful asset that can be used to the advantage not only of the Share Family as a whole, but for each single discipline.


'''<big>Number 11, February 2026</big>'''


The tenants currently active and the corresponding discovery websites are:
You can download a printable version at https://bit.ly/SFBulletin_n11_Feb2026 


* [https://www.svde.org/ Share-VDE] (Virtual Discovery Environment);
Citation: Share Family Team, ''Share Family Bulletin'' ''11'' (February 2026), https://bit.ly/SFBulletin_n11_Feb2026
* [https://catalogo.share-cat.unina.it/sharecat/clusters?l=en SHARE Catalogue] - the Italian network of university libraries;
==LOD Platform developments==
* the [https://pcc-lod.org/ PCC data pool] - the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) Catalogue in Linked Open Data;
After the announcement of [https://bit.ly/SFBulletin_n10_Apr2025 LOD Platform version 3] that was done in the last Share Family Bulletin and also through a [https://www.share-family.org/news?id=69711a59dbd9b press release], we have been doing hard work to progress with developments that will enable users to fully benefit from the tools and components available on the various Share Family environments and tenants.
* [https://www.natbib-lod.org/ National Bibliographies] in Linked Open Data;
* [https://parsifal.urbe.it/parsifal/?l=en Parsifal] - the LOD portal of the URBE consortium (Roman Union of Ecclesiastical Libraries).
* [https://lillit.share-family.org/lillit/?l=en LILLIT] - portal for Italian illustrated books with Linked Open Data descriptions and illustrations of Italian editions printed in the 16th-18th centuries.


[[File:loghi.jpg|none|thumb|600x600px]]
The LOD Platform technology is shared across all environments of the [https://www.share-family.org/ Share Family initiative], and software releases are rolled out to the various [[ShareFamily:Main Page#The%20Share%20Family%20branches%20(tenants)|tenants]] following a dedicated schedule.
===Data management and Cluster Knowledge Base===
'''<big>LDF - Linked Data Fragments</big>'''


We are advancing developments of the LDF - Linked Data Fragments structure to support an innovative approach to linked data creation and consumption. LDF are being implemented to provide a distributed and scalable approach for publishing and serving linked data via real-time RDF generation, on-demand ontology mapping, and multi-provenance management. The goal is to create an efficient RDF data distribution process without relying on a RDF storage: this will greatly benefit scalability and resource saving.


'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">The tenant infrastructure is designed to be flexible, therefore it’s possible to show the data of participating members at the tenant level or even in an institutional customised sub-portal of a pre-existing tenant (also called “skin portal” in Share Family jargon). This can be done according to the institution/consortia’s needs and policies.</span>'''
This module is currently in development with the following major expected output:
*a set of APIs that adopt Linked Data Fragments;
*RDF Data is translated/generated on demand;
*output data available in multiple formats.
The latest presentation of LDF implementation for the LOD Platform has been given at the LD4 conference 2025: [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/1/17/Leveraging_Linked_Data_Fragments_for_enhanced_data_publication.pdf Leveraging Linked Data Fragments for enhanced data publication], by Andrea Gazzarini; the [https://www.youtube.com/live/zttp0H1ao5k?feature=shared&t=876 recording is available].


[[File:sf infrastr.jpg|none|thumb|700x700px]]




'''<big>Entity Cluster Knowledge Base</big>'''


The Share Family team is committed to advancing the technical developments of each tenant and also to fostering user engagement through outreach initiatives. Below are reported the main facts around membership and outreach within the Share Family.
As described in previous updates, the [[ShareDoc:PublicDocumentation/LODPlatform/ClusterKnowledgeBase|CKB - Cluster Knowledge Base]] of linked data entities has been undergoing significant refactoring to make the data structure more and more granular. This will serve a twofold purpose:
*allowing a single conversion pipeline that does not use MARC structure as an intermediate BIBFRAME conversion step;
*prepare the data structure for the new NoSQL database that will be implemented ('''see also the Architecture and infrastructure section''' below).
As part of the granularization work, attributes that were previously managed as literals are now controlled vocabularies sets; therefore, they have been clustered and assigned a URI.
===JCricket Entity Editor===
Share Family members have been testing [[ShareDoc:PublicDocumentation/LODPlatform/EntityEditor|JCricket]] throughout 2025 and raised input for improvement, while the Share Family team has been continuing the work on new features to enable granular and effective cataloguing and progressively make JCricket a production-ready tool.


==== New Share-VDE members and ongoing pilots ====
Among these features, it’s worth mentioning the advancement in the integration with third parties’ systems ('''see the [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates#Third_parties_integration Third parties integration section]''' below), the creation of the Provision Activity metadata block and the review of the Provenance-based function.
In 2023 Berkeley Law Library joined [https://www.svde.org/ Share-VDE], while, in an exciting development, Toronto University Library and Lehigh University will be joining Share-VDE in 2024.


The National Taiwan University Library will join the Share Family too: it will be particularly valuable to enrich LOD Platform processes with the treatment of non-Latin scripts, thus expanding the wealth of data at disposal of the Share Family community.
'''Provision Activity''' is a set of attributes of the Instance entity that represent an event or action describing:
*how an Instance was produced and made available;
*the agents involved (e.g., publishers, printers, distributors);
*the space-time coordinates (location and date of the activity).
This new metadata block serves not only the enrichment of the information available for an entity, but also the curation of publisher data according to RDA guidelines (e.g. the ability to record the Publication statement). Also, the Provision Activity is in fact a multi-entity metadata block, because it includes information that is described as individual entities in their turn. So, we needed JCricket to handle this complex data structure that will also serve other use cases: this multi-entity metadata block approach will be used for the management of Subject entities in JCricket.[[File:Provision Activity.png|none|thumb|594x594px|https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/6/66/Provision_Activity.png]]The LOD Platform system is '''Provenance-based''', meaning that the relationship between the entity and the source record that contributed to its creation is always retained through the Provenance, in order to maintain the relationship with the data that generated an entity over time and allow to manage the entity both in automated update processes and in manual processes (via JCricket entity editor). '''See also [[ShareDoc:PublicDocumentation/LODPlatform/EntityEditor#Provenance%20and%20Prism|the wiki section on the Provenance]]'''.


In the framework of the cooperation with library consortia that the Share Family is bringing forward, we are working on a linked open data pilot with the [https://ivpluslibraries.org/ IPLC - IvyPlus Libraries’ Confederation] using the IPLC data lake hosted in the MARC based [https://pod.stanford.edu/ POD - Platform for Open Data]. We are working to provide the Share Family LOD Platform environment and discovery portal to the IPLC institutions to assess the compatibility with the POD Aggregator scope and carry on the complementary aspects with the BIBFRAME based components of Share Family. The initial phase started in October 2023 with the set-up of the dedicated IPLC infrastructure tenant, which will include a dedicated discovery portal. After the ingestion of the 100M+ records from the 13 IPLC institutions is concluded an assessment period by POD members to test the output will be undertaken.
This is the background for some important improvements to the “IsLeader” information: this feature is key to streamline cataloguing in a cooperative system where different users work on entities stored in the same Cluster Knowledge Base, so the underlying logic must be solid.


The participation of new institutions signifies a commitment to advancing research and educational opportunities, and we look forward to the contributions they will make to our growing community of libraries and institutions.
We reviewed and improved the way JCricket handles the “IsLeader” value to better support libraries’ cataloguing needs. The IsLeader value identifies which data values are shown on public portals, helping limit redundancy in a collaborative environment where multiple libraries contribute similar information. Previously, many values were automatically marked as leader and could not be edited or unmarked, creating issues when data was entered incorrectly. With the new behavior, catalogers can freely add or remove the leader flag from any value, even if it is the only one present, for both single-value and multi-value fields.


==== The British National Bibliography in NatBib tenant ====
We also fixed issues with multi-value fields, where all values were treated as leaders by default. Catalogers can now choose which values should be leaders. Finally, leader values can now be deleted with an explicit confirmation, and internal handling of multi-value fields has been improved to ensure consistent saving and retrieval of data. Overall, these changes make JCricket more flexible, reliable, and aligned with real-world cataloguing practices. Other JCricket features useful to facilitate real-world cataloguing practices:
As part of the NatBib - National Bibliographies tenant, the British Library announced its Linked Open Data BNB - British National Bibliography in beta version, now available for exploration at https://bl.natbib-lod.org.
*display of contributors roles’ URIs;
*display of contributors’ role term in the provenance metadata block;
*properties menu has been restructured and now groups properties by category;
*display of properties’ URIs and descriptions (see the Front-end enhancements section below);
*OpusType implementation.
===Architecture and infrastructure ===
<big>'''Multi-tenant architecture'''</big>


'''CAVEAT''': as of early December 2023, we are updating the technical infrastructure of https://bl.natbib-lod.org, therefore the portal might be unstable.
The [[ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates#Architecture%20and%20infrastructure|multi-tenancy infrastructure configuration]] has been deployed and is being progressively rolled out to the various tenants: the first multi-tenant installations are two UAT - User Acceptance Testing environments for the National Bibliographies tenant and the National Taiwan University Library tenant. Uploading institutions’ data to UAT environments is the preliminary step to production, for testing and verification with libraries.


For further insights into the benefits of the collaboration between the Share Family and the British Library and future developments, we invite you to visit their Digital Scholarship blog at https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2023/07/share-family-british-national-bibliography.html.


==== The PCC data pool hosted by the Share Family infrastructure ====
The cooperation with the Program for Cooperative Cataloguing - initiated in 2020 as part of the LD4P pilot cataloguing activities and enabled by the cooperation with OCLC - for the management of a linked data pool of PCC records has continued with a test phase by a dedicated task group formed by volunteer PCC members. The task group has tested the PCC data pool discovery portal https://pcc-lod.org/ and reported back inputs for adjustments that will greatly improve our work.


The feedback received from the task group was analyzed and mostly incorporated by the Share Family team. The output will be visible after re-indexing of PCC data pool data, which is expected to take place in early 2024. The PCC will also be involved in a testing phase of the JCricket entity editor. To present the new edition of the data as well as JCricket we plan to establish a communication channel with the PCC group for ongoing updates and training in the use of JCricket.
'''<big>New database</big>'''


==== SHARE Catalogue: the Italian network of university libraries ====
We are working on the preliminary implementations for the new NoSQL database where to migrate the current database; these implementations include the ongoing granularization of the CKB. This process is crucial to have a sustainable environment in terms of scalability and performance for the whole LOD Platform system, and in terms of hosting resources, which is a critical factor for the sustainability of the initiative.
The [https://catalogo.share-cat.unina.it/sharecat/clusters?l=en SHARE Catalogue initiative] has completed the work on UNIMARC - BIBFRAME direct mapping and conversion (with no intermediate steps through MARC), and will share this work with the linked data community through a Wikibase instance https://unimarc2bibframe.wikibase.cloud/ that will be enriched and documented.
===Third parties integration===
The [[ShareVDE:Activities/Integrations#Benefits%20of%20Cooperative%20and%20Shared%20Cataloguing|integration of LOD Platform components with ILS/LSP]] has progressed and has been demonstrated during 2025:


The Share Family team has been working hard to incorporate the developments derived from the UNIMARC - BIBFRAME direct mapping and to prepare for the switch from the discovery portal version 1.0 to 2.0 (and the consequent transition of the back-end infrastructure to AWS - Amazon Web Services that better supports system scalability and robustness), which is expected in early 2024.
* the workflow '''from JCricket to Alma''' has been set up so that data created in JCricket can be posted to Alma APIs. This has been presented at the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86mpENSDeYY BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025]. Further operations are being implemented to close this loop.
*After the initial operation '''from JCricket to FOLIO''' was implemented earlier last year, the workflow from JCricket to FOLIO has been further enhanced:
**the data flow from JCricket into FOLIO’s Inventory module was already been implemented, so that data from Share can be posted to FOLIO;
**from JCricket, users can query FOLIO and retrieve data to enrich Share Family entities. This has been presented at the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86mpENSDeYY BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025].
[[File:Cooperative cat. in FOLIO.png|none|thumb|449x449px|https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/6/68/Cooperative_cat._in_FOLIO.png]][[File:Cooperative cat. in Alma.png|none|thumb|447x447px|https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/4/4b/Cooperative_cat._in_Alma.png]]The integration with external ILS / LSP contributes to shaping a cooperative cataloguing environment, an integrated workflow where local and central systems are fully interoperable: data entered locally is reflected centrally, and conversely, central data is discoverable and reusable locally. The focus is on bidirectional synchronization; cataloging gains added value by keeping local and central environments aligned. This model enables full interoperability between local and central systems, ensuring that data flows in both directions. This new cooperative cataloging scenario is built on strong interoperability between systems, allowing libraries the freedom to design their own workflows — whether starting from the central hub or from the local environment — depending on their specific cataloging needs at any given time.


==== Parsifal: the LOD portal of the URBE consortium ====
The integration with external ILS / LSP contributes to shaping a cooperative cataloguing environment, an integrated workflow where local and central systems are fully interoperable: data entered locally is reflected centrally, and conversely, central data is discoverable and reusable locally. The focus is on bidirectional synchronization; cataloging gains added value by keeping local and central environments aligned. This model enables full interoperability between local and central systems, ensuring that data flows in both directions. This new cooperative cataloging scenario is built on strong interoperability between systems, allowing libraries the freedom to design their own workflows — whether starting from the central hub or from the local environment — depending on their specific cataloging needs at any given time.
On May 11, 2023 the Roman Union of Ecclesiastical Libraries (URBE) and [https://www.atcult.com/en/home @CULT] (the technological branch of the Share Family, developing and maintaining its [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:Main_Page#The_Share_Family_technology:_the_LOD_Platform LOD Platform technology]) announced the release of [https://parsifal.urbe.it/parsifal/homeSearch?l=en PARSIFAL], a cutting-edge linked data management system and entity discovery platform. PARSIFAL aims to enhance the exchange and interoperability of bibliographic data and authority items, significantly increasing accessibility to the abundant resources of the 16 participating URBE libraries. With a vast collection of 2.8 million records regularly updated, PARSIFAL offers users a streamlined research experience, enriched by diverse catalogues.
===Front-end enhancements===
'''<big>Accessibility</big>'''


Much work has been done to allow Parsifal libraries to have a shared authority system, built on collaboration between libraries and which guarantees each member to be autonomous in local data treatment, sharing in the same time the effort of data quality with the whole Parsifal community. This is achieved through the unified access for the maintenance of the Central Authority Catalogue, whereby each library accesses the same system to increase the quality level of the catalogue. The authority data, commonly created or enriched by all URBE cataloguers, becomes part of the clustering/conversion pipeline, to optimize the libraries' production processes and increase the quality of the data published on the Parsifal portal.
An important achievement is the [[Main Page#Accessibility|accessibility certification]] that has recently been issued by a specialised company that has validated the front-end components of the LOD Platform Entity Discovery Portal.


==== LILLIT: the portal for Italian illustrated books 1501-1800 ====
While we are going to publish the certifications on the relevant Entity Discovery portals, the certifications of compliance are also available here:
The [https://lillit.share-family.org/lillit/ LILLIT] portal for Italian illustrated books 1501-1800 is a collaborative effort by Sapienza University, ICCU (Central Institute for the Single Catalog of Italian Libraries), the Central Institute for Graphics and @Cult. Developed through a Sapienza University of Rome project, LILLIT offers an intuitive interface, advanced search options, and access to digital copies. Utilizing Linked Open Data, the portal displays enhanced information on 16th-18th century editions, highlighting engraving techniques and creators. Operating on the BIBFRAME bibliographic model, LILLIT seamlessly aligns with the technological and conceptual innovation of the other Share Family initiatives, bringing new possibilities to the bibliographic landscape.
*[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/b/b4/20251210_AccessibilityStatement_ShareFamily.pdf Accessibility statement] in a standard synthetic format;
*[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/a/a8/20251218_VPAT2.5Rev_WCAG_ShareFamily.pdf Accessibility Conformance Report WCAG Edition] based on VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template).


==== Towards new domains: Share Art, Share Music, Share MIA ====
The Share Family institutions and collaborative networks of libraries are engaging in discussions to establish three specialized shared discovery environments: Share Art, Share Music, and Share MIA (Manuscripts, Incunabula, and Ancient Books). These initiatives are designed to cater to the specific needs of the art, music, and ancient book domains, providing a wealth of resources and knowledge to users, and further strengthening the interconnected bibliographic data network through the use of linked open data technologies. This will translate into dedicated tenants (branches) of the Share Family infrastructure.


On this topic, two presentations have been given at IFLA WLIC 2023 and IFLA 2023 Satellite Conference, that can be found in the [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareVDE:Resources Resources] section of this wiki:


* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/8/8c/IFLA2023WLIC.pdf The Share Family technology - concrete benefits to increase discovery experience and linked data curation in the art domain], by Jackie Shieh.
'''<big>User interface enhancements</big>'''
* [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/b/ba/IFLA_2023_Satellite_Conference_Art.pdf The Share Family initiative - enabling connections for the cultural heritage], by Michele Casalini.


==== New brochure website for the Share Family ====
As mentioned above, the Provision Activity, the management of Provenance-based functions, and the integration with external sources entailed intense back-end and front-end work.
We are thrilled to introduce the new Share Family website, [https://www.share-family.org/ www.share-family.org], a digital hub designed to connect our community. This website serves as a window into the heart of the Share Family, offering a comprehensive overview of our mission and values, a general presentation of our goals and technology. The website also serves as a dynamic platform for keeping everyone informed about our latest [https://www.share-family.org/en/news activities], [https://www.share-family.org/en/events events], and advancements.


To delve even further into the intricacies of our project, we encourage you also to explore the other sections of this wiki, a resource which provides more in-depth information, including technical documents, a [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/7/7f/Share-Family_brochure_2023-June.pdf new brochure] that can be freely distributed, and recent updates available both in [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/d/d0/Share-VDE_and_Share_Family_update_-_2023-Jul-12.pdf presentation format] and as [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DrZcxwjEqq88b-kqOVaunVXzS7eg6KeL/view demo video].
Among other enhancements, it’s worth mentioning that:
*the review of the '''Publication page''' has been completed under the guidance of the UX-UI and Natbib Working Groups (see the Share Family Community Work section below) and is going to be released shortly. As part of this effort, the group shortened the current metadata list into a core set of metadata, tailored according to the material type. They also took into account which selected metadata should appear exclusively on the National Bibliographies portal. Any additional metadata that is not part of the core set will be accessible via a “Show more” option, which will expand the information in an accordion-style display. The group also revised the current “More options” button, relocating the download formats functionality under a new “View source description” button.
*The new '''Opus types''' defined by the SEI Working Group have been incorporated into the user interface. The changes to the SVDE Ontology that this work has entailed have been reflected at the technical level with the reconciliation of pre-existing Opus types (e.g. multi-volume types).
* We have implemented the informative feature of '''displaying properties’ details''' for JCricket cataloguers. This has given the occasion to improve the way that users are presented with the actions that can be performed on properties. The Property details dialogue box shows information about the property from the SVDE ontology (URI, name description) and provides a dedicated space where we can list all actions available for a property (e.g. adding a language). This UI pattern allow for many more actions to be added in the future.
[[File:property details.png|none|thumb|448x448px|https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/e/e3/property_details.png]]
==Community work==
===Share Family Community updates===
<big>'''Advisory Council and Working Groups'''</big>


==== Conferences and events ====
The '''Share Family Advisory Council''' takes an active role in determining future uses and vision for the Share Family initiative, and maintains communication among the member institutions and with external groups and communities.
In 2023, the Share Family team and member institutions have had the opportunity to showcase the initiative and highlight its latest developments at numerous conferences. These presentations have served as a platform for sharing insights, best practices, and the collective achievements of the Share Family community. You can find slides and, often, recording of these events on this page of the [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareVDE:Resources#Year_2023 Share Family wiki].  


==== Work exchange with National Library of Finland member Serafia Kari ====
As part of these activities, the liaison with the RDA Steering Committee has been a strategic achievement (see below).
From April to May 2023 we welcomed Serafia Kari, a Service Designer for the [https://www.finna.fi/Content/about_finnafi?lng=en-gb Finna] service within the National Library of Finland. Her main goal during her visit was to conduct a usability study focusing on the Share-VDE portal's discovery interface ([https://www.svde.org/ www.svde.org]). This study aimed to assess the information-sharing capabilities of the portal from the perspective of users from different backgrounds. Serafia recently had the opportunity to share her findings in a presentation titled "Usability Study of Share-VDE" at the BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe, held in Brussels on September 19, 2023. For those eager to delve deeper into her research, the slides and a recording of the session are available for review at https://www.bfwe.eu/brussels_2023.


=== Share Family community work and cooperation ===
Since the last quarter of 2025, the Advisory Council is discussing with the Share Family team a new model of cooperation within the initiative, informally called DDC - '''Distributed Development Community framework'''. Upon input from several institutions, we are developing a new form of participation whereby implementations and processes can be shared with participating members and other interested parties. The goal is to enable expert institutions, library IT departments, and technical partners to contribute to the development of extensions and integrations of the LOD Platform technology, without deviating from its core components.
We are very committed to encouraging the cooperation within the Share Family membership, to demonstrate the invaluable benefit of being part of an initiative developed and driven by libraries and for libraries. To support the constant exchange of ideas and principles that, together, define the vision, aims and progress of Share Family environments and their tools, we have created new materials and accompanying documents to guide member institutions into this process.


The wiki members’ area dedicated to participating institutions has been enriched with documentation on how to provide feedback on the various linked data entity discovery environments. Structured processes supported by ad hoc tools and testing environments have been shared with members that are actively involved in exchanges with the Share Family staff to collaboratively improve the system functioning.
This work in progress will be shared with the larger library community once it will be consolidated and approved by the Advisory Council. So far, the structure of the framework includes:
*definition of the governance model;
*definition of the roles of the Advisory Council and Technical Governance Committee, including their purposes, composition, responsibilities, and relationships with stakeholders and institutions;
*definition of the contribution and review flow;
*definition of the technical roles.
The [[ShareVDE:Members/Share-VDE working groups#Sapientia%20Entity%20Identification%20working%20group%20(SEI)|'''SEI - Sapientia Entity Identification working group''']] continues to play a critical role in modeling the data structure and the [https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8332350 '''SVDE Ontology'''] underlying the LOD Platform system.[[File:SVDE ontology.png|none|thumb|503x503px|https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/a/ac/SVDE_ontology.png]]


==== Share-VDE and Share Family Working Groups ====
The group has been working on and will continue to address:
Share Family activities are organised into several work strands. Being a community initiative, the goals and desired outcomes are defined by the participating institutions through active engagement in different [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareVDE:Members/Share-VDE_working_groups working groups]. The current working groups are guided by the Advisory Council, which plays a key role in shaping the future of the initiative and provides advice on how to develop use cases and establish priorities, and ensures communication among member institutions.
*modeling the Opus type properties;
* formalising ontological relationship between an instance produced with clusterization and the original bibliographic records that contributed to it to enable the initial provenance, and make sure that changes go back and forth;
*looking at extending properties for Agents to enrich that set of metadata with more relationships;
*how to express the origin of the metadata that come into the LOD Platform
The [[ShareVDE:Members/Share-VDE working groups#SVDE-AC%20User%20Experience.2FUser%20Interface%20working%20group%20.28UX-UI.29|'''User Experience – User Interface Working Group''']] has worked jointly with the [[ShareVDE:Members/Share-VDE working groups#Share%20Family%20National%20Bibliographies%20working%20group%20.28Natbib.29|National Bibliographies Working Group]] to restructure the Publication entity page of the Entity Discovery Portal, with the aim of presenting information in a more streamlined fashion, to offer data consumers and cataloguers among Share Family members a better user experience. This has entailed partial restructuring of back-end-to-front-end data flows and to the UI design (see the [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pk3iVEw_Hlww6dpyrW7rIUfnTQKax41lXae2q5V9uRM/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.nlpizdhi0cgd Front-end enhancements section] above).


Each member institution has a seat in the Advisory Council and this governance model based on direct participation of member institutions steering the initiative represents one of the major strengths and core values of the Share Family.


Also, each community of institutions participating in the individual Share Family of initiatives can establish its specific governance group that determines the policy for the treatment and processing of the data.


Among the major achievements of the Working Groups in cooperation with the Share Family team it is worth mentioning those carried out by the SEI – Sapientia Entity Identification Working Group and the User Experience – User Interface Working Group cooperating with the National Bibliographies Working Group.
<big>'''Share Family tenants and LOD Platform implementations'''</big>


===== Sapientia Entity Identification Working Group =====
On 18th September 2025 an informal '''Share Family meeting''' dedicated to members was held in University of Naples, after the two-day BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe. The discussion touched on the initial input for the Distributed Development Community framework and the best practices for the use of JCricket in a shared environment.
The [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareVDE:Members/Share-VDE_working_groups#SVDE-AC_Sapientia_Entity_Identification_working_group_.28SEI.29 SEI – Sapientia Entity Identification Working Group] has worked on the creation of the Share-VDE Ontology, that is an extension to BIBFRAME. While the ontology supports the discovery functionality of Share-VDE and the Share family search systems, it may be re-used in any system requiring a bridge among BIBFRAME, IFLA LRM and RDA. Classes of the Share-VDE ontology include the svde:Opus, svde:OpusType, and svde:Work. The Share-VDE ontology achieves interoperability among the major bibliographic models by asserting that bibliographic entities are described by attribute sets. The attribute set modeling approach is a departure from the conceptual modeling that has informed the development of nearly all modern linked data models. A few steps remain to complete the ontology, and its preliminary version has been published, see https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8332350. The latest public updates on the ontology have been shared at SWIB conference ([https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/9/90/development-of-SVDE-ontology.pdf slides] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyrVaKJYt7w recording] available).


===== User Experience – User Interface Working Group =====
On behalf of the '''various [[ShareFamily:Main Page#The%20Share%20Family%20branches%20(tenants)|Share Family tenants]]''' we are happy to mention important advancements:
The analysis for improvements of the Share Family entity discovery portals has been devised by the [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareVDE:Members/Share-VDE_working_groups#SVDE-AC_User_Experience.2FUser_Interface_working_group_.28UX-UI.29 User Experience – User Interface Working Group] cooperating with the [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareVDE:Members/Share-VDE_working_groups#Share_Family_National_Bibliographies_working_group_.28Natbib.29 National Bibliographies Working Group]. After tests and use of the beta version of [https://www.svde.org/ Share-VDE 2.0] and the [https://www.natbib-lod.org/ National Bibliographies portal], working groups members have been analysing the front-end layer of the entity discovery portals according to a set of evaluation criteria including for example usability and accessibility, consistency of design and navigation, overall user friendliness, integration with SVDE features and local library discoveries etc. In parallel, the groups have been collecting issues and adjustments that can be potentially made to the display of information on the entity discovery portals, along with proposals for new features that will enhance the user experience.
*'''Brandeis University''' is a new SVDE member, we are very excited to extend the cooperation to this new institution.
*'''Lehigh University''' (SVDE member and FOLIO adopter) has carried on the experimentation of integrating LOD Platform technology with FOLIO through a pilot focussed on a dedicated library collection. The positive results have been presented at the Share Family Workshop 2025 in Philadelphia and at the WOLFcon 2025 (see more on this event below).
*The [[Natbib:Main Page|'''National Bibliographies tenant''']] is progressing towards production: the British Library is feeding the beta [https://bl.natbib-lod.org/ BNB - British National Bibliography] with ongoing updates, and the National Library of Norway is testing the pre-production environment; we are working to enlarge participating institutions with new members.
*We are testing the pre-production environment for the '''SHARE Catalogue tenant''', with the goal of completing the full migration to production soon. The interesting aspects of the cooperation within the SHARE Catalogue consortium are outlined in two presentations:
**[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dlrpCT-bywNAOkEJO0SSxJkNh5U-FQwX/view ''Mapping UNIMARC to BIBFRAME: The SHARE Catalogue Knowledge Base on Wikibase.cloud | OpenReview''], at Wikidata and research, 5-6 June 2025, by Claudio Forziati and Alessandra Moi.
**[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/7/71/Convegno_Nilde_Ottobre_2025_Possemato%26Forziati.pdf ''SHARE Catalogue e la Share Family: una rete di competenze e risorse per l’innovazione sostenibile dei servizi bibliotecari''], at Nilde 2025 XII national conference on document delivery and interlibrary cooperation, 2 October 2025, by Tiziana Possemato and Claudio Forziati.
*The Parsifal dashboard has been released to support the workflow of the institutions of the URBE network participating in the [https://parsifal.urbe.it/parsifal/ '''Parsifal tenant'''], engaged in cataloging efforts aimed at harmonizing and aligning bibliographic and authority data. This new module is fully integrated into the discovery portal https://parsifal.urbe.it/ and provides advanced data editing and authority control features, designed to facilitate comparison, exchange, and foster cooperation among the cataloguers from the URBE network.
*The LOD Platform installation for the [https://ntu-lod.org/ '''National Taiwan University Library'''] is currently in the testing phase. As far as multilingualism of the data and non-Latin scripts management, this is being a test-bed to improve the automated processes that elaborate variant forms in various languages and scripts. NTU users are testing the dedicated installation both from the perspective of how the data has been processed and clustered automatically to be displayed on the entity discovery portal, as well as how data curation can be manually performed through JCricket in a multilingual data space.
Implementations of the LOD Platform technology span to further applications. One effective example has been presented at the [https://www.bfwe.eu/naples_2025 BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025]: the '''"Bibliographic Database of Interactive Books"''' consists of bibliographical information about books, manuscript and printed, ancient and modern, and prints containing interactive paper devices. The bibliographic data collected in the database is transformed into an entity-based structure and converted into the BIBFRAME format, using specific components of the LOD Platform. Furthermore, the project enriches the BIBFRAME output by integrating the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), allowing users to access and explore high-resolution images of the interactive works. This combination enhances both the discoverability and the visual experience of the materials, supporting advanced research and specialized applications. Gianfranco Crupi, Michela Giacomelli, Alice Guercio, and Annalisa Di Sabato presented an [[:File:bfwe25-1-05-crupi.pdf|introduction to the project]] along with a [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/c/c4/bfwe25-1-06-disabato-guercio_%281%29.pdf demo of the portal]; the [https://youtu.be/OTCTnaVIOAk recording is available].


This analysis, which will incorporate inputs also from the PCC, will output suggestions for improvements in the overall orchestration of the front-end layer and will continue with the exploration of further areas for enhancements and new features.
Intense experimentation has been done with LOD Platform APIs to exploit its ability to integrate into other applications. It’s particularly interesting to mention the work done with '''Retrieval Augmented Generation techniques and generative AI and BIBFRAME to support discovery'''. Several presentations have been delivered by Jim Hahn on these aspects:
 
*''[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/b/bb/estratto_Final_ELUNA_Learns_Linked_Data_Knowledge_Graphs_and_Agentic_AI_for_Library_Innovation-20251217.pdf Agentic AI and AI Agents in Practice]'', at ELUNA Learns, 17 December 2025;
==== IFLA, Linked data and BIBFRAME communities ====
*[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/1/10/semantic_web_agents_redux.pdf ''Semantic Web Agents Redux: From Knowledge Representation to AI-Driven Discovery''], at SWIB 2025 Conference; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIDuavwrpQ0&t=63s recording available];
*the illustration of ''BIBFRAME Discovery Using Generative AI'' explored how knowledge representation can be fully exploited by integrating Generative AI into BIBFRAME-based discoveries, leveraging LOD Platform technology; [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/8/84/bfwe25-1-12-hahn.pdf slides] and [https://youtu.be/uRaANa4t5o0 recording] are available;
*the presentation ''BIBFRAME has Entered the Chat'' from the [https://bit.ly/SF-ALA-2025-slides Share Family Workshop] at ALA Annual, June 30 2025.
===Collaborations with the library community===
The Share Family team and member institutions continue to nurture the liaisons with the library information experts and linked data and BIBFRAME communities, to increase interoperability to the advantage of new bibliographic and linked data workflows and to enhance existing ones.
The Share Family team and member institutions continue to nurture the liaisons with the library information experts and linked data and BIBFRAME communities, to increase interoperability to the advantage of new bibliographic and linked data workflows and to enhance existing ones.


Tiziana Possemato participates in the IFLA Bibliographic Section through various working groups of this division, co-chairing with Annette Dortmund the National Bibliographies and New Technologies working group that will be dedicated to national bibliographies metadata and ICT technologies like AI, linked open data, the semantic web. This opportunity will also foster the interconnections of the Share Family National Bibliographies working group and the related tenant https://natbib-lod.org.
Moreover, participation in international working groups and networks is strategic to the Share Family community, and responds to its core principle of creating connections and increasing communication across initiatives and projects.
 
The exchanges with [https://sites.google.com/stanford.edu/ld4-community-site/home LD4P - Linked Data 4 Production] will move towards establishing a permanent connection with the Sinopia BIBFRAME editor environment for the mutual exchange of data in BIBFRAME/RDF.
 
More broadly, Share-VDE takes part in the [https://wiki.lyrasis.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=249135298 BIG - BIBFRAME Interoperability Group] established to create guidelines for data exchange in BIBFRAME, thus expanding the methods and tools shared by linked data nodes for BIBFRAME interoperability.
 
=== LOD Platform developments ===
We are striving to enhance the Share Family [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareFamily:Main_Page#The_Share_Family_technology:_the_LOD_Platform LOD Platform technology] towards production workflows that make available [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/5/54/share_components_EN.pdf advanced tools and components] to support linked data management systems and entity discovery platforms of institutions and consortia.
 
The increasing complexity of the Share Family system poses several challenges that we constantly tackle by improving the organisation of our teamwork and the planning of developments.
 
Here follows an overview of the major work strands intertwined.
 
==== JCricket entity editor ====
JCricket is the Share Family tool for collaborative entity curation shared across member institutions. It primarily serves as an entity editor, enabling - according to the BIBFRAME ontology - the creation of new entities, entity modification, and the application of merge and split functions to improve the quality of automated LOD Platform clustering processes. With JCricket, it becomes possible to manage or create any kind of entities, each representing what, in traditional cataloging, was known as a "bibliographic set".
 
Also, the availability of this tool enables new data workflows that are being analysed to support the integration and use of JCricket even outside of the Share Family LOD Platform. We are considering several scenarios where linked data systems (eg. Library of Congress Marva or LD4P Sinopia BIBFRAME editors) can simultaneously operate locally with their own tools and share and cooperatively edit linked data resources across different environments using JCricket.
 
JCricket operates on the Share-VDE CKB - Cluster Knowledge Base (and on the CKB of the other Share Family tenants), which is not a local data storage for a single library, but rather the outcome of complex integration processes that generate entities from local data in traditional formats, such as MARC, and new formats, like RDF. Its optimal application is within a large data pool formed through contributions from multiple libraries, such as Share-VDE; therefore, it does not impact original data that reside in member libraries’ systems (unless libraries want to use ad hoc APIs for entity updates both in SVDE and in their systems).
 
The following picture illustrates JCricket workflow from a conceptual standpoint:
[[File:jcr.jpg|none|thumb|1000x1000px]]
The system fetches MARC records from member libraries for ingestion and BIBFRAME conversion; linked data entities are created from this process and stored in the Cluster Knowledge Base. Entities are in fact clusters, ie. entities created through the aggregation of data from multiple institutions (Provenances).
 
Using JCricket, member libraries are able to authenticate in a dedicated area of the search portal and manually edit potential errors found in entities that are created during the conversion of records contributed by member libraries. These edits on entities will be saved in the system.
 
Also, JCricket APIs allow communication with member libraries’ systems, to notify the changes made on the entities in the CKB: this can be done in case the libraries want to use this service to be informed about the changes in the clusters to which the library data contributed, or even to optionally activate the entity update APIs.
 
JCricket is integrated in the discovery portal web interface, for authenticated users.
[[File:jcr.jpg|none|thumb|1000x1000px]]
Several demos have been done this year, showing the advancements of JCricket user interface, which will be released in a test version shortly:
 
* JCricket première at the ALA Conference 2023, during the [https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vv_xOT7leOwf-TcWjC_mcJUCisLhudO/view Share-VDE Workshop];
* JCricket demo at the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbrqvWGnvfI LD4 Conference 2023] ([https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/7/71/JCricket_overview_-_LD4P_-_2023-July-12.pdf slides] are also available).
 
The work on this key component of the LOD Platform technology and of the vision of Share Family environments for cooperative linked data sharing was one of the most intense throughout 2023. A test version of JCricket is soon to be released for user validation.
 
==== Third parties integration ====
The evolution of the Share Family technology encompasses the ability to mutually integrate the data produced by the LOD Platform with external systems, notably with local ILS and Library Service Platforms and authority sources.
 
As to ILS and LSP integration, it’s worth mentioning some advancements:
 
* the new authority services for MARC-based workflows – designed with [https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/ShareVDE:Members/Share-VDE_working_groups#SVDE-AC_Authority.2FIdentifier_Management_Services_working_group_.28AIMS.29 SVDE AIMS Working Group] and further input by Stanford University Library – have been completed and are available for institutions willing to test and use them. Also, the AIMS Working Group will reconvene in 2024 to analyse and devise the authority control features for RDF / linked data based workflows;
* the integration of Alma circulation APIs for local library services is almost completed;
* the integration with the native BIBFRAME cataloguing editor Sinopia is progressing: the parser for incoming RDF data from Sinopia to be clustered by Share-VDE processes is under development;
* the connection to FOLIO ILS has been analysed to correlate FOLIO Inventory data with Share-VDE data, and to integrate JCricket user interface in FOLIO. [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/7/74/ShareVDE_meets_FOLIO_Collaborative_Entity_Editing.pdf A possible model for ILS/LSP interaction through FOLIO] was presented by Andrea Gazzarini from the Share Family team and Sebastian Hammer from Index Data at WOLFcon 2023, to engage discussion within the linked data community on how to pursue this connection.
 
As to integration with authority systems, several data sources are being investigated and in some cases the initial integration steps have been completed:
 
* LD4P Questioning Authority lookup tool;
* Wikidata for mutual enrichment of entity IDs (initial specifications were shaped by SVDE working groups);
* ISNI for mutual enrichment of entity IDs (initial specifications were shaped by SVDE working groups).
 
The resulting scenario will translate into an integrated, “hybrid” operational ecosystem, based on a variety of tools and diverse data sources including traditional workflows (eg. new authority services for MARC workflows) as well as advanced models for data exchange, eg. those envisaged above to simultaneously operate through JCricket and local BIBFRAME editors both within the Share Family system and locally.
 
==== Data processing and BIBFRAME conversion ====
 
===== Catalogues ingestion and ongoing data updates =====
Much work is going on to complete the full workflow of data ingestion, conversion, regular updates of data exports from libraries and publication to the discovery portal of the Share-VDE tenant.  


The very complex architecture of the Share Family, made of different tenants each one residing on a separate branch of the system infrastructure with its own installation of databases and system components, entails articulated processes that often take some time to become stable, due to the impact they have on the whole system. In this scenario, the completion of the module handling ongoing updates (“delta updates” in Share Family jargon) done in 2023 is a significant milestone adding value to a system moving towards the support of stable production workflows.


The full workflow of ingestion and ongoing updates has been tested for the beta version of the BNB – British National Bibliography skin portal on NatBib tenant, and is being fine tuned for the future steps towards bringing the BNB in production. The BNB experience will also be useful to measure the performance of the system in view of the much larger scale process for the Share-VDE tenant.


It’s also important to mention that we anticipate the release of a new version 3 of the software supporting JCricket and introducing major changes, that will trigger a new ingestion of libraries’ catalogues and the connection to the delta updates module - pausing the load of library catalogue using the previous version of the software was preparatory to this major change. The new version 3 release is expected in early 2024, starting with the Share-VDE tenant, and the subsequent steps (ie. delta updates module set-up and data ingestion, publication of new data on svde.org portal), will follow.
'''<big>Consortia</big>'''


===== Granularization of the Cluster Knowledge Base and new conversion model =====
During 2025 the collaboration with library consortia and networks of institutions working with shared practices has been reinforced. The [https://bit.ly/SF-Executive-Summary-Consortia Share Family Executive Summary for Consortia] laid the groundwork for devising use cases to apply LOD Platform methodologies, tools and components to support consortia in adopting linked data. Among the potential use cases for consortia cooperation it’s worth mentioning:
So far, the support of linked data conversion from multiple input formats has been managed through multiple conversion pipelines.
*centralised bibliographic information services for end users, supported by tools for the management of bibliographic information remotely: that is, starting from the Instance and from the data related to the specific physical resource (Item), the user could access direct communication channels with the institution that owns the resource, in order to get additional information;
*loan services can be configured either as a local loan, and therefore mainly addressed to the internal users of the institution, or as an inter-system and/or inter-library loan, between institutions connected by specific agreements for the exchange of resources;
*resource sharing tools integrating the reconciled data with shared print and shared e-resources services;
*shared print retention policies;
*collection analysis, e.g. aggregating collection information at item level;
*open data sharing and reuse for all types of users;
*data curation for professional users through JCricket.


In line with the evolution of the system over time, it became clear that a single “source of truth” is needed to orchestrate a conversion workflow as frictionless as possible. So, several analysis and implementation actions have been undertaken to revise the current conversion model and streamline this process by extending input data capabilities and making the conversion component format-agnostic.


To achieve this, the new conversion model should support:


* a finer granularity level of the CKB in compliance with BIBFRAME granularity;
'''<big>RDA Steering Committee</big>'''
* a “format-agnostic” CKB with extended input data capabilities to converge all input formats into one conversion source (eg. MARC21, UNIMARC, native BIBFRAME/RDF eg. from LD4P Sinopia application profiles etc.);
* one single conversion pipeline from the CKB – removing the conversion pipeline based on MARC.


In addition, the granularization of the CKB will facilitate the implementation of the Share-VDE Ontology extensions that have been introduced during 2023 by the work of the SEI – Sapientia Entity Identification Working Group (see the current version of the SVDE Ontology at https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8332350), and the ongoing improvements to the clustering algorithm that will derive from members’ and users’ tests with the data.
The [https://www.rdatoolkit.org/sites/default/files/uploads/RSC_Chair_2025_9_BIBFRAME_protocol_ShareVDE_2025_0.pdf liaison protocol] between RDA Steering Committee and the Share Family already established in 2025 has been a milestone for cooperation between the two communities. The dialogue is moving forward to outline a joint work plan that can bring concrete benefits in terms of practical work.


Finally, the review of the CKB will facilitate the integration of data from other domains, including archival and museum domains.
The protocol has been published:
*on RDA Chair Documents page: https://www.rdatoolkit.org/rsc/chair-documents
*in RDA protocols and liaisons page: https://www.rdatoolkit.org/rsc/RSCprotocols;
*as a RDA news item: https://www.rdatoolkit.org/rsc/ShareFamilyProtocol;
* as a Share Family news item: https://www.share-family.org/news?id=6972442e57e40.


Once the final pipeline conversion will be in place, the triple store will make available the stable version of the data that will be even more compatible for reuse externally of the Share system.


This work will continue in 2024.


===== Subjects and Concepts =====
'''<big>IFLA</big>'''
Collaboration with numerous libraries has contributed to improving the data processing of subject-related information. Currently, we identify and display the most general level, which is the Related Subjects. These subjects may encompass various linguistic variations, but these variations will not be explicitly categorized as such; typically, they will be considered as Related Subjects.
[[File:concepts.jpg|none|thumb|900x900px]]
In the future, we plan to highlight more specific subsets of equivalent subjects or linguistic variations. This selection will be based on the original data provided by the libraries. Variations will only be identified as such if the library has accurately flagged them in their own records. Additionally, further analysis is being conducted to enhance the development of Concepts and their display in all Share Family tenants.
[[File:topics.jpg|none|thumb|600x600px]]


===== Non-Latin scripts =====
As a member of the [https://www.ifla.org/units/bibliography/ IFLA Bibliography Section] and serving on several working groups, Tiziana Possemato is also the official liaison IFLA Bibliography Section / Share Family National Bibliographies group. Highlights from two IFLA events:*[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/b/ba/Evolving_Bibliographic_Services_by_Leveraging_Open_Data_the_Casalini_Libri_Experience.pdf ''Evolving Bibliographic Services by Leveraging Open Data''], at the webinar Driving Innovation in Bibliographic Services: Strategies and Projects in Focus, July 15 2025, by Patricia O'Loughlin; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-pJN5EQb1Q&t=2599s recording available];
Within the Share Family community, a significant and ongoing discussion revolves around the processing of non-Latin scripts. This encompassing dialogue includes active participation from members within the Advisory Council. Testing of data provided by the National Taiwan University Library will be carried out by the LD4P Non-Latin Script Material affinity group.
*[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/c/cb/Metadata_Symposium_20250319_BIBFRAMEInteroperability_Possemato.pdf ''BIBFRAME Interoperability Group - Tackling Implementation Challenges Across Institutions''], at IFLA Metadata Standards Symposium, 19 March 2025, by Xiaoli Li, Kalli Mathios, Tiziana Possemato.


Also, an experiment is being carried out with a test portal supporting Arabic script that gave us the occasion to further test with non-Latin scripts, and to apply to the LOD Platform features that will be propagated to all other Share Family tenants, ie.:


* the creation of Subject entity starting from authority subjects (ie. not only from bib. record access points);
* an improved version of Subject management, including related subjects.


===== Goals for the next period =====
'''<big>PCC - Program for Cooperative Cataloguing</big>'''
By adopting BIBFRAME as the main ontology in compatibility with IFLA-LRM, the Share Family takes advantage of the potentials of linked open data to facilitate interoperability among data pools, in coexistence with MARC. Leveraging this approach, we work to ultimately:


* consolidate outputs and collaborative tools to enhance workflows and services for consortia or individual libraries;
Share Family representatives have been involved at various levels in PCC - Program for Cooperative Cataloguing activities including various stakeholders:
* transform library catalogs into research tools with structured access and visibility to original language research in all disciplines;
* the PCC Task Group on AI and Machine Learning for Cataloging and Metadata has concluded its mandate. The [https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/PFCCP/PCC+Task+Group+on+AI+and+Machine+Learning+for+Cataloging+and+Metadata report on activities] is available, while in this wiki page we offer a high-level description of Share Family approach to AI: [[ShareVDE:Activities#Exploring%20AI%20for%20Discovery%20and%20Metadata%20Enrichment|Exploring AI for discovery and metadata enrichment]];
* serve as an authoritative data source, contribute to a new bibliographic ecosystem where data modeling, enrichment and sharing are handled collectively;
*the recent [https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/PFCCP/EMCO EMCO - Entity Management program] is meeting to create an international cooperative program for managing linked data entities, and the experience from the Share Family can contribute to this objective.
* apply and support open metadata policies.


As always, this will be achieved by being independent of local practices and of ILS/LSP local systems, and through the international collaboration at the heart of the Share Family vision.


We will continue to cooperate with any kind of system or initiative that will be eager to become “Share-ready”.


'''<big>BIG - BIBFRAME Interoperability Group</big>'''


Share-VDE participates in the [https://wiki.lyrasis.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=249135298 BIG - BIBFRAME Interoperability Group] contributing to both the general group, as well as to the BIG Interlingua sub-group, aimed at devising BIBFRAME shapes that can then be validated for data exchange.
==Events==
Regular virtual and in-person events, such as conferences, workshops, and working group meetings, provide opportunities for member institutions to connect, share ideas, and explore potential areas of collaboration. Full documentation is available on the page [[ShareFamily:Resources|Resources]].


Your opinion is always welcome: to provide feedback on the Share Family discovery website, report bugs and suggestions as external users reach out through the forum https://forum.svde.org/ or send a message to helpdesk@svde.org.  
===ARLIS N/A 2025===
The cross-domain vocation of the Share Family has been represented in the art libraries sector at the [https://arlisna53rdconference.sched.com/about ARLIS/NA 53rd Annual Conference], where Jackie Shieh and Anne Evenhaugen have presented [https://arlisna53rdconference.sched.com/event/1x5y4/breaking-barriers-using-art-and-architectural-data ''Data Unleashed: Smithsonian Library Data for Artists and Artwork in Share-VDE BIBFRAME''].
===Share Family Workshop at ALA 2025 ===
The Share Family Workshop took place on June 30th, 2025, as part of the ALA Annual Conference. Engaging presentations were delivered by various speakers:
*''BIBFRAME has Entered the Chat'', by Jim Hahn;
*''BIBFRAME at Last!'', by Lisa McColl;
*''How to improve the dialogue and interaction between JCricket and FOLIO'', by Tiziana Possemato;
*''Consortia Perspectives'', by Kirsten Leonard, Tina Baich, Jill Morris;
*''Share Family Response'', by Nina Servizzi
[https://bit.ly/SF-ALA-2025-slides The slides] of all presentations are available, along with the [https://youtu.be/tgm3rGdrbuo?feature=shared recording].
===LD4 Conference 2025===
The work around LDF - Linked Data Fragments that has been undertaken to support agile linked data representation and consumption has been presented by Andrea Gazzarini at the LD4 Conference 2025 with the presentation [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/1/17/Leveraging_Linked_Data_Fragments_for_enhanced_data_publication.pdf ''Leveraging Linked Data Fragments for enhanced data publication''].
===BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025 ===
The [https://www.bfwe.eu/naples_2025 BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025] hosted presentations illustrating the application of Share Family LOD Platform technology to different use cases:
*the ''Bibliographic Database of Interactive Books'' consists of bibliographical information about books, manuscript and printed, ancient and modern, and prints containing interactive paper devices. Gianfranco Crupi, Michela Giacomelli, Alice Guercio, and Annalisa Di Sabato presented an [[:File:bfwe25-1-05-crupi.pdf|introduction to the project]] along with a [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/c/c4/bfwe25-1-06-disabato-guercio_%281%29.pdf demo of the portal]; the [https://youtu.be/OTCTnaVIOAk recording is available].
*The illustration of ''BIBFRAME Discovery Using Generative AI'' by Jim Hahn explored how knowledge representation can be fully exploited by integrating Generative AI into BIBFRAME-based discoveries, leveraging LOD Platform technology; [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/8/84/bfwe25-1-12-hahn.pdf slides] and [https://youtu.be/uRaANa4t5o0 recording] are available.
*The live demo by Tiziana Possemato and Annalisa Di Sabato on ''Share Family linked data editors: practical experience of JCricket integration with third parties'' showcased the advancements of integration of LOD Platform tools with ILS/LSP such as Alma and FOLIO; [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/c/ce/bfwe25-2-05-possemato.pdf slides] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86mpENSDeYY recording] are available.
=== WOLFcon 2025 ===
The use of JCricket Entity Editor as a bridge for cataloguing workflows has been illustrated at the WOLFcon 2025 with two presentations:
*[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/d/d8/WOLFCon_2025_Share_Possemato.pdf Linked Data in FOLIO: From Models to Workflows], by Tiziana Possemato;
* ''Building Bridges Between Library Communities: Ongoing Integration of FOLIO with JCricket as an Entity Editor'', by Lisa McColl and Anne Winkler; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmpXtYrLtNE&list=PLFfQUfD45HZZiuDdU4_zNP7dVxo0LczdG&index=7 recording available].
===DCMI 2025===
The DCMI - Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Conference 2025 has seen several contributions by Tiziana Possemato covering a range of topics that touch on the Share Family commitment for a sustainable linked open data ecosystem. From the value of promoting open data, to the scenarios for a sustainable economic implementation of Share Family technology, to the focus on the National Bibliographies in linked open data supported by our initiative, this conference has been a fruitful occasion to exchange ideas and perspectives with the DCMI community. All presentations are available:
*''[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/2/2d/DCMI2025_P3_Open_borders_for_wider_access_to_knowledge.pptx.pdf Open borders for wider access to knowledge: connecting National Bibliographies in Linked Open Data];''
*''[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/8/8c/DCMI2025_P2_SVDE_Economics_%26_Sustainability.pptx.pdf Share-VDE Economics & Sustainability];''
*''[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/9/97/DCMI2025_P1_SVDE_as_Open_Metadata_Service.pptx.pdf Open Metadata in the Share Family].''
===SWIB 2025===
A lightning talk on the experimentation with AI-Driven Discovery and LOD Platform APIs has been delivered by Jim Hahn: [https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/1/10/semantic_web_agents_redux.pdf ''Semantic Web Agents Redux: From Knowledge Representation to AI-Driven Discovery''], the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIDuavwrpQ0&t=63s recording is available].
===Next events===
Public presentations where Share Family staff or members contribute their experience are announced at https://www.share-family.org/en/events.


For general information on the initiative, contact info@svde.org.  
At the [https://www.charleston-hub.com/charleston-conference-asia/agenda/ Charleston Conference Asia], on January 28 Nina Servizzi, Roberto Delle Donne, Sebastian Hammer, Michele Casalini will present on ''[https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/5/5a/CCA26-Share_Family_2025-Jan-28_accessible.pptx.pdf The Share Family initiative: enabling a new level of cooperation for authoritative linked open data to support research, teaching, and AI].''


At the Library of Congress BIBFRAME Update Forum on February 9 Tiziana Possemato and Anna Lionetti will present on ''BIBFRAME in Practice: Powering a Collaborative Share Family Community with JCricket''.
==Information resources==
The Share Family provides rich informative channels that provide an overview to the initiative, as well as technical insights and practical documentation for participating institutions:
*the presentation website https://www.share-family.org/, including a new section dedicated to [https://www.share-family.org/#national-bibliographies National Bibliographies];
*the Share Family wiki provides specialised information for members and library professionals. It includes two new sections dedicated to [[Natbib:Main Page|National Bibliographies]] and the NatBib [[Natbib:Institutions|participant institutions]]. The technical documentation to leverage the Share Family tool is available at [[ShareDoc:PublicDocumentation|Public Documentation]];  
*the YouTube channel with the [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLByj3df0D9a3r75rVYgjxb1Yr4UM4gby4 presentation videos];
*follow us on the brand-new [https://www.linkedin.com/company/share-family-linked-open-data-ecosystem LinkedIn space] to foster the outreach to our community.
'''Subscribe to [mailto:info@share-family.org info@share-family.org]''' to be up to date with news, announcements and insights, or to request general information.
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Latest revision as of 10:10, 24 February 2026


This section includes the latest issue of the Share Family Bulletin. More information on the current activities going on within the various branches of the Share Family can be found throughout this wiki website https://wiki.share-family.org/, which is the informative hub of Share-VDE and the Share Family.

For a general presentation of the Share Family, of its mission and values, and to find out the latest news, you can also explore the brochure website https://www.share-family.org/.

To explore previous issues of the Share Family Bulletin, feel free to navigate through the following links:


Number 11, February 2026

You can download a printable version at https://bit.ly/SFBulletin_n11_Feb2026

Citation: Share Family Team, Share Family Bulletin 11 (February 2026), https://bit.ly/SFBulletin_n11_Feb2026

LOD Platform developments

After the announcement of LOD Platform version 3 that was done in the last Share Family Bulletin and also through a press release, we have been doing hard work to progress with developments that will enable users to fully benefit from the tools and components available on the various Share Family environments and tenants.

The LOD Platform technology is shared across all environments of the Share Family initiative, and software releases are rolled out to the various tenants following a dedicated schedule.

Data management and Cluster Knowledge Base

LDF - Linked Data Fragments

We are advancing developments of the LDF - Linked Data Fragments structure to support an innovative approach to linked data creation and consumption. LDF are being implemented to provide a distributed and scalable approach for publishing and serving linked data via real-time RDF generation, on-demand ontology mapping, and multi-provenance management. The goal is to create an efficient RDF data distribution process without relying on a RDF storage: this will greatly benefit scalability and resource saving.

This module is currently in development with the following major expected output:

  • a set of APIs that adopt Linked Data Fragments;
  • RDF Data is translated/generated on demand;
  • output data available in multiple formats.

The latest presentation of LDF implementation for the LOD Platform has been given at the LD4 conference 2025: Leveraging Linked Data Fragments for enhanced data publication, by Andrea Gazzarini; the recording is available.


Entity Cluster Knowledge Base

As described in previous updates, the CKB - Cluster Knowledge Base of linked data entities has been undergoing significant refactoring to make the data structure more and more granular. This will serve a twofold purpose:

  • allowing a single conversion pipeline that does not use MARC structure as an intermediate BIBFRAME conversion step;
  • prepare the data structure for the new NoSQL database that will be implemented (see also the Architecture and infrastructure section below).

As part of the granularization work, attributes that were previously managed as literals are now controlled vocabularies sets; therefore, they have been clustered and assigned a URI.

JCricket Entity Editor

Share Family members have been testing JCricket throughout 2025 and raised input for improvement, while the Share Family team has been continuing the work on new features to enable granular and effective cataloguing and progressively make JCricket a production-ready tool.

Among these features, it’s worth mentioning the advancement in the integration with third parties’ systems (see the Third parties integration section below), the creation of the Provision Activity metadata block and the review of the Provenance-based function.

Provision Activity is a set of attributes of the Instance entity that represent an event or action describing:

  • how an Instance was produced and made available;
  • the agents involved (e.g., publishers, printers, distributors);
  • the space-time coordinates (location and date of the activity).

This new metadata block serves not only the enrichment of the information available for an entity, but also the curation of publisher data according to RDA guidelines (e.g. the ability to record the Publication statement). Also, the Provision Activity is in fact a multi-entity metadata block, because it includes information that is described as individual entities in their turn. So, we needed JCricket to handle this complex data structure that will also serve other use cases: this multi-entity metadata block approach will be used for the management of Subject entities in JCricket.

https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/6/66/Provision_Activity.png

The LOD Platform system is Provenance-based, meaning that the relationship between the entity and the source record that contributed to its creation is always retained through the Provenance, in order to maintain the relationship with the data that generated an entity over time and allow to manage the entity both in automated update processes and in manual processes (via JCricket entity editor). See also the wiki section on the Provenance.

This is the background for some important improvements to the “IsLeader” information: this feature is key to streamline cataloguing in a cooperative system where different users work on entities stored in the same Cluster Knowledge Base, so the underlying logic must be solid.

We reviewed and improved the way JCricket handles the “IsLeader” value to better support libraries’ cataloguing needs. The IsLeader value identifies which data values are shown on public portals, helping limit redundancy in a collaborative environment where multiple libraries contribute similar information. Previously, many values were automatically marked as leader and could not be edited or unmarked, creating issues when data was entered incorrectly. With the new behavior, catalogers can freely add or remove the leader flag from any value, even if it is the only one present, for both single-value and multi-value fields.

We also fixed issues with multi-value fields, where all values were treated as leaders by default. Catalogers can now choose which values should be leaders. Finally, leader values can now be deleted with an explicit confirmation, and internal handling of multi-value fields has been improved to ensure consistent saving and retrieval of data. Overall, these changes make JCricket more flexible, reliable, and aligned with real-world cataloguing practices. Other JCricket features useful to facilitate real-world cataloguing practices:

  • display of contributors roles’ URIs;
  • display of contributors’ role term in the provenance metadata block;
  • properties menu has been restructured and now groups properties by category;
  • display of properties’ URIs and descriptions (see the Front-end enhancements section below);
  • OpusType implementation.

Architecture and infrastructure

Multi-tenant architecture

The multi-tenancy infrastructure configuration has been deployed and is being progressively rolled out to the various tenants: the first multi-tenant installations are two UAT - User Acceptance Testing environments for the National Bibliographies tenant and the National Taiwan University Library tenant. Uploading institutions’ data to UAT environments is the preliminary step to production, for testing and verification with libraries.


New database

We are working on the preliminary implementations for the new NoSQL database where to migrate the current database; these implementations include the ongoing granularization of the CKB. This process is crucial to have a sustainable environment in terms of scalability and performance for the whole LOD Platform system, and in terms of hosting resources, which is a critical factor for the sustainability of the initiative.

Third parties integration

The integration of LOD Platform components with ILS/LSP has progressed and has been demonstrated during 2025:

  • the workflow from JCricket to Alma has been set up so that data created in JCricket can be posted to Alma APIs. This has been presented at the BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025. Further operations are being implemented to close this loop.
  • After the initial operation from JCricket to FOLIO was implemented earlier last year, the workflow from JCricket to FOLIO has been further enhanced:
    • the data flow from JCricket into FOLIO’s Inventory module was already been implemented, so that data from Share can be posted to FOLIO;
    • from JCricket, users can query FOLIO and retrieve data to enrich Share Family entities. This has been presented at the BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025.
https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/6/68/Cooperative_cat._in_FOLIO.png
https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/4/4b/Cooperative_cat._in_Alma.png

The integration with external ILS / LSP contributes to shaping a cooperative cataloguing environment, an integrated workflow where local and central systems are fully interoperable: data entered locally is reflected centrally, and conversely, central data is discoverable and reusable locally. The focus is on bidirectional synchronization; cataloging gains added value by keeping local and central environments aligned. This model enables full interoperability between local and central systems, ensuring that data flows in both directions. This new cooperative cataloging scenario is built on strong interoperability between systems, allowing libraries the freedom to design their own workflows — whether starting from the central hub or from the local environment — depending on their specific cataloging needs at any given time.

The integration with external ILS / LSP contributes to shaping a cooperative cataloguing environment, an integrated workflow where local and central systems are fully interoperable: data entered locally is reflected centrally, and conversely, central data is discoverable and reusable locally. The focus is on bidirectional synchronization; cataloging gains added value by keeping local and central environments aligned. This model enables full interoperability between local and central systems, ensuring that data flows in both directions. This new cooperative cataloging scenario is built on strong interoperability between systems, allowing libraries the freedom to design their own workflows — whether starting from the central hub or from the local environment — depending on their specific cataloging needs at any given time.

Front-end enhancements

Accessibility

An important achievement is the accessibility certification that has recently been issued by a specialised company that has validated the front-end components of the LOD Platform Entity Discovery Portal.

While we are going to publish the certifications on the relevant Entity Discovery portals, the certifications of compliance are also available here:


User interface enhancements

As mentioned above, the Provision Activity, the management of Provenance-based functions, and the integration with external sources entailed intense back-end and front-end work.

Among other enhancements, it’s worth mentioning that:

  • the review of the Publication page has been completed under the guidance of the UX-UI and Natbib Working Groups (see the Share Family Community Work section below) and is going to be released shortly. As part of this effort, the group shortened the current metadata list into a core set of metadata, tailored according to the material type. They also took into account which selected metadata should appear exclusively on the National Bibliographies portal. Any additional metadata that is not part of the core set will be accessible via a “Show more” option, which will expand the information in an accordion-style display. The group also revised the current “More options” button, relocating the download formats functionality under a new “View source description” button.
  • The new Opus types defined by the SEI Working Group have been incorporated into the user interface. The changes to the SVDE Ontology that this work has entailed have been reflected at the technical level with the reconciliation of pre-existing Opus types (e.g. multi-volume types).
  • We have implemented the informative feature of displaying properties’ details for JCricket cataloguers. This has given the occasion to improve the way that users are presented with the actions that can be performed on properties. The Property details dialogue box shows information about the property from the SVDE ontology (URI, name description) and provides a dedicated space where we can list all actions available for a property (e.g. adding a language). This UI pattern allow for many more actions to be added in the future.
https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/e/e3/property_details.png

Community work

Share Family Community updates

Advisory Council and Working Groups

The Share Family Advisory Council takes an active role in determining future uses and vision for the Share Family initiative, and maintains communication among the member institutions and with external groups and communities.

As part of these activities, the liaison with the RDA Steering Committee has been a strategic achievement (see below).

Since the last quarter of 2025, the Advisory Council is discussing with the Share Family team a new model of cooperation within the initiative, informally called DDC - Distributed Development Community framework. Upon input from several institutions, we are developing a new form of participation whereby implementations and processes can be shared with participating members and other interested parties. The goal is to enable expert institutions, library IT departments, and technical partners to contribute to the development of extensions and integrations of the LOD Platform technology, without deviating from its core components.

This work in progress will be shared with the larger library community once it will be consolidated and approved by the Advisory Council. So far, the structure of the framework includes:

  • definition of the governance model;
  • definition of the roles of the Advisory Council and Technical Governance Committee, including their purposes, composition, responsibilities, and relationships with stakeholders and institutions;
  • definition of the contribution and review flow;
  • definition of the technical roles.

The SEI - Sapientia Entity Identification working group continues to play a critical role in modeling the data structure and the SVDE Ontology underlying the LOD Platform system.

https://wiki.share-vde.org/w/images/a/ac/SVDE_ontology.png

The group has been working on and will continue to address:

  • modeling the Opus type properties;
  • formalising ontological relationship between an instance produced with clusterization and the original bibliographic records that contributed to it to enable the initial provenance, and make sure that changes go back and forth;
  • looking at extending properties for Agents to enrich that set of metadata with more relationships;
  • how to express the origin of the metadata that come into the LOD Platform

The User Experience – User Interface Working Group has worked jointly with the National Bibliographies Working Group to restructure the Publication entity page of the Entity Discovery Portal, with the aim of presenting information in a more streamlined fashion, to offer data consumers and cataloguers among Share Family members a better user experience. This has entailed partial restructuring of back-end-to-front-end data flows and to the UI design (see the Front-end enhancements section above).


Share Family tenants and LOD Platform implementations

On 18th September 2025 an informal Share Family meeting dedicated to members was held in University of Naples, after the two-day BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe. The discussion touched on the initial input for the Distributed Development Community framework and the best practices for the use of JCricket in a shared environment.

On behalf of the various Share Family tenants we are happy to mention important advancements:

  • Brandeis University is a new SVDE member, we are very excited to extend the cooperation to this new institution.
  • Lehigh University (SVDE member and FOLIO adopter) has carried on the experimentation of integrating LOD Platform technology with FOLIO through a pilot focussed on a dedicated library collection. The positive results have been presented at the Share Family Workshop 2025 in Philadelphia and at the WOLFcon 2025 (see more on this event below).
  • The National Bibliographies tenant is progressing towards production: the British Library is feeding the beta BNB - British National Bibliography with ongoing updates, and the National Library of Norway is testing the pre-production environment; we are working to enlarge participating institutions with new members.
  • We are testing the pre-production environment for the SHARE Catalogue tenant, with the goal of completing the full migration to production soon. The interesting aspects of the cooperation within the SHARE Catalogue consortium are outlined in two presentations:
  • The Parsifal dashboard has been released to support the workflow of the institutions of the URBE network participating in the Parsifal tenant, engaged in cataloging efforts aimed at harmonizing and aligning bibliographic and authority data. This new module is fully integrated into the discovery portal https://parsifal.urbe.it/ and provides advanced data editing and authority control features, designed to facilitate comparison, exchange, and foster cooperation among the cataloguers from the URBE network.
  • The LOD Platform installation for the National Taiwan University Library is currently in the testing phase. As far as multilingualism of the data and non-Latin scripts management, this is being a test-bed to improve the automated processes that elaborate variant forms in various languages and scripts. NTU users are testing the dedicated installation both from the perspective of how the data has been processed and clustered automatically to be displayed on the entity discovery portal, as well as how data curation can be manually performed through JCricket in a multilingual data space.

Implementations of the LOD Platform technology span to further applications. One effective example has been presented at the BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025: the "Bibliographic Database of Interactive Books" consists of bibliographical information about books, manuscript and printed, ancient and modern, and prints containing interactive paper devices. The bibliographic data collected in the database is transformed into an entity-based structure and converted into the BIBFRAME format, using specific components of the LOD Platform. Furthermore, the project enriches the BIBFRAME output by integrating the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), allowing users to access and explore high-resolution images of the interactive works. This combination enhances both the discoverability and the visual experience of the materials, supporting advanced research and specialized applications. Gianfranco Crupi, Michela Giacomelli, Alice Guercio, and Annalisa Di Sabato presented an introduction to the project along with a demo of the portal; the recording is available.

Intense experimentation has been done with LOD Platform APIs to exploit its ability to integrate into other applications. It’s particularly interesting to mention the work done with Retrieval Augmented Generation techniques and generative AI and BIBFRAME to support discovery. Several presentations have been delivered by Jim Hahn on these aspects:

Collaborations with the library community

The Share Family team and member institutions continue to nurture the liaisons with the library information experts and linked data and BIBFRAME communities, to increase interoperability to the advantage of new bibliographic and linked data workflows and to enhance existing ones.

Moreover, participation in international working groups and networks is strategic to the Share Family community, and responds to its core principle of creating connections and increasing communication across initiatives and projects.


Consortia

During 2025 the collaboration with library consortia and networks of institutions working with shared practices has been reinforced. The Share Family Executive Summary for Consortia laid the groundwork for devising use cases to apply LOD Platform methodologies, tools and components to support consortia in adopting linked data. Among the potential use cases for consortia cooperation it’s worth mentioning:

  • centralised bibliographic information services for end users, supported by tools for the management of bibliographic information remotely: that is, starting from the Instance and from the data related to the specific physical resource (Item), the user could access direct communication channels with the institution that owns the resource, in order to get additional information;
  • loan services can be configured either as a local loan, and therefore mainly addressed to the internal users of the institution, or as an inter-system and/or inter-library loan, between institutions connected by specific agreements for the exchange of resources;
  • resource sharing tools integrating the reconciled data with shared print and shared e-resources services;
  • shared print retention policies;
  • collection analysis, e.g. aggregating collection information at item level;
  • open data sharing and reuse for all types of users;
  • data curation for professional users through JCricket.


RDA Steering Committee

The liaison protocol between RDA Steering Committee and the Share Family already established in 2025 has been a milestone for cooperation between the two communities. The dialogue is moving forward to outline a joint work plan that can bring concrete benefits in terms of practical work.

The protocol has been published:


IFLA

As a member of the IFLA Bibliography Section and serving on several working groups, Tiziana Possemato is also the official liaison IFLA Bibliography Section / Share Family National Bibliographies group. Highlights from two IFLA events:*Evolving Bibliographic Services by Leveraging Open Data, at the webinar Driving Innovation in Bibliographic Services: Strategies and Projects in Focus, July 15 2025, by Patricia O'Loughlin; recording available;


PCC - Program for Cooperative Cataloguing

Share Family representatives have been involved at various levels in PCC - Program for Cooperative Cataloguing activities including various stakeholders:


BIG - BIBFRAME Interoperability Group

Share-VDE participates in the BIG - BIBFRAME Interoperability Group contributing to both the general group, as well as to the BIG Interlingua sub-group, aimed at devising BIBFRAME shapes that can then be validated for data exchange.

Events

Regular virtual and in-person events, such as conferences, workshops, and working group meetings, provide opportunities for member institutions to connect, share ideas, and explore potential areas of collaboration. Full documentation is available on the page Resources.

ARLIS N/A 2025

The cross-domain vocation of the Share Family has been represented in the art libraries sector at the ARLIS/NA 53rd Annual Conference, where Jackie Shieh and Anne Evenhaugen have presented Data Unleashed: Smithsonian Library Data for Artists and Artwork in Share-VDE BIBFRAME.

Share Family Workshop at ALA 2025

The Share Family Workshop took place on June 30th, 2025, as part of the ALA Annual Conference. Engaging presentations were delivered by various speakers:

  • BIBFRAME has Entered the Chat, by Jim Hahn;
  • BIBFRAME at Last!, by Lisa McColl;
  • How to improve the dialogue and interaction between JCricket and FOLIO, by Tiziana Possemato;
  • Consortia Perspectives, by Kirsten Leonard, Tina Baich, Jill Morris;
  • Share Family Response, by Nina Servizzi

The slides of all presentations are available, along with the recording.

LD4 Conference 2025

The work around LDF - Linked Data Fragments that has been undertaken to support agile linked data representation and consumption has been presented by Andrea Gazzarini at the LD4 Conference 2025 with the presentation Leveraging Linked Data Fragments for enhanced data publication.

BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025

The BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe 2025 hosted presentations illustrating the application of Share Family LOD Platform technology to different use cases:

  • the Bibliographic Database of Interactive Books consists of bibliographical information about books, manuscript and printed, ancient and modern, and prints containing interactive paper devices. Gianfranco Crupi, Michela Giacomelli, Alice Guercio, and Annalisa Di Sabato presented an introduction to the project along with a demo of the portal; the recording is available.
  • The illustration of BIBFRAME Discovery Using Generative AI by Jim Hahn explored how knowledge representation can be fully exploited by integrating Generative AI into BIBFRAME-based discoveries, leveraging LOD Platform technology; slides and recording are available.
  • The live demo by Tiziana Possemato and Annalisa Di Sabato on Share Family linked data editors: practical experience of JCricket integration with third parties showcased the advancements of integration of LOD Platform tools with ILS/LSP such as Alma and FOLIO; slides and recording are available.

WOLFcon 2025

The use of JCricket Entity Editor as a bridge for cataloguing workflows has been illustrated at the WOLFcon 2025 with two presentations:

DCMI 2025

The DCMI - Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Conference 2025 has seen several contributions by Tiziana Possemato covering a range of topics that touch on the Share Family commitment for a sustainable linked open data ecosystem. From the value of promoting open data, to the scenarios for a sustainable economic implementation of Share Family technology, to the focus on the National Bibliographies in linked open data supported by our initiative, this conference has been a fruitful occasion to exchange ideas and perspectives with the DCMI community. All presentations are available:

SWIB 2025

A lightning talk on the experimentation with AI-Driven Discovery and LOD Platform APIs has been delivered by Jim Hahn: Semantic Web Agents Redux: From Knowledge Representation to AI-Driven Discovery, the recording is available.

Next events

Public presentations where Share Family staff or members contribute their experience are announced at https://www.share-family.org/en/events.

At the Charleston Conference Asia, on January 28 Nina Servizzi, Roberto Delle Donne, Sebastian Hammer, Michele Casalini will present on The Share Family initiative: enabling a new level of cooperation for authoritative linked open data to support research, teaching, and AI.

At the Library of Congress BIBFRAME Update Forum on February 9 Tiziana Possemato and Anna Lionetti will present on BIBFRAME in Practice: Powering a Collaborative Share Family Community with JCricket.

Information resources

The Share Family provides rich informative channels that provide an overview to the initiative, as well as technical insights and practical documentation for participating institutions:

Subscribe to info@share-family.org to be up to date with news, announcements and insights, or to request general information.

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