ShareFamily:NewsAndUpdates/April2025

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

Citation: Share Family Team, Share Family Bulletin 10 (April 2025), 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 Third parties integration section), 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 isProvenance-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.

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:

• Accessibility statement in a standard synthetic format;
• Accessibility Conformance Report WCAG Edition based on VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template).

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 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

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:
  • 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.
  • 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 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:

• Presentation on the use of Share Family APIs and generative AI search, at ELUNA Learns, 17 December 2025;
• Semantic Web Agents Redux: From Knowledge Representation to AI-Driven Discovery, at SWIB 2025 Conference; 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; slides and recording are available;
• the presentation BIBFRAME has Entered the Chat from the Share Family Workshop at ALA Annual, June 30 2025.