Last edited 5 months ago
by Serena Cericola

About the Share Family

Revision as of 16:11, 9 March 2022 by Anna Lionetti (talk | contribs)


The Share Family of initiatives based on linked data comprises Share-VDE (Virtual Discovery Environment), Share-Catalogue (the Italian network of university libraries applying the Share principles), Share-Art (designed to support specialist art libraries. Parallel to Share-Art is the Kubikat-LOD project, representing the linked open data entity discovery platform containing the catalogues of the Art History libraries of the Kubikat group), and Share-Music (a pilot in the music domain). The different characteristics of each field 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.

Being part of the Share – Linked Data Environment means facilitating cataloguing and exposition of bibliographic records in linked data, thus supporting the transition from the traditional cataloguing environment to innovative models applying the linked data paradigm, and providing the LAM - Libraries, Archives, Museums domain and information professionals with a more comprehensive suite of tools at their disposal.

The platform www.svde.org and the other dedicated environments part of the Share Family enhance the discovery potential of library resources and unveil information that would otherwise have been hidden in archives, thus enabling the access to a rich amount of data that can be exported and re-imported by the participating institutions.

The output common to all the branches of the Share Family foresees:

  • the enrichment of original MARC data and of the records converted in linked data with identifiers from external sources (e.g. ISNI, VIAF) and original Share identifiers;
  • the reconciliation and clusterization of entities;
  • the indexing of records in the Cluster Knowledge Base, authoritative environment in linked data;
  • the conversion of library catalogues from MARC to linked data;
  • delivery of converted and enriched data to libraries for reuse in their systems;
  • the publication of library records in linked data on the relative Share discovery platform.

The Share Family technology: the LOD Platform

The technology underlying the systems part of the Share Family is based on the LOD Platform, that is a highly innovative technological framework, an integrated ecosystem for the management of bibliographic, archive and museum catalogues, and their conversion to linked data, extensible as needed for specific purposes.

For more details, see a summary of the main components of the LOD Platform and an extensive description of the framework.

The Share Family technology relies on a tenant infrastructure. A tenant is represented by a pool of institutions contributing to the same Cluster Knowledge Base. Multiple tenants form the Share Family. Family members interoperate among respective Cluster Knowledge Bases through a centralized registry. For more details on the Share Family tenant infrastructure see the Summary of Share Family tenants.

The Share Family branches

The Share Family of initiatives includes different branches and sister projects, supported by the same LOD Platform technology. Each branch or project is hosted in a specific tenant of the system architecture with a corresponding own Cluster Knowledge Base and own web portal for the tenant. In some cases, within a tenant a customised skin portal can be created to address ad hoc needs of an institution, or group of institutions, willing to expose local services through the Share Family technology.

While the main portal of a tenant shows the data of all the institutions feeding the tenant Cluster Knowledge Base, the skin portal shows only the data of the institution or group of institutions that skin has been designed for.

TENANT NAME Share-VDE Kubikat-LOD PCC data pool National bibliographies Share-Catalogue
TENANT WEB PORTAL URL https://svde.org https://kubikat-lod.org coming soon coming soon http://catalogo.share-cat.unina.it/sharecat/clusters?l=en
DATA HOSTED IN TENANT CKB catalogues converted to linked data of SVDE member libraries catalogues converted to linked data of Kubikat art history libraries records converted to linked data of PCC members national bibliographies converted to linked data of Share Family members participating to this branch catalogues converted to linked data of Share-Catalogue member libraries
SKIN PORTAL WITHIN TENANT University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, University of Alberta not foreseen not foreseen British National Bibliography, others TBD not foreseen
SKIN PORTAL URL coming soon not foreseen not foreseen coming soon not foreseen

The Share Family institutions and map

The Share Family institutions can participate in one or more tenants. Here follows the summary of the institutions part of the Share Family.

Share-VDE members Share Family members
Share-VDE full members LD4P cohort members Share-Catalogue Institutions Kubikat-LOD project
Duke University Cornell University Università Degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
New York University Frick Art Reference Library Università degli Studi della Basilicata Biblioteca Hertziana, Rome
Stanford University Harry Ransom Center Texas A&M Università Degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale Central Institute of Art History, Munich
University of Alberta - NEOS consortium Harvard University Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris
University of Chicago National Library of Medicine Università del Salento
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor Northwestern University Università degli Studi di Salerno
University of Pennsylvania Princeton University Università degli Studi del Sannio RCost
Yale University University of California Davis Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
University of California San Diego
National libraries University Colorado at Boulder Share-Music project
Library of Congress University of Minnesota Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
National Library of Norway University of Texas A&M Library of Congress
National Library of Finland University of Washington Stanford University
Smithsonian Institution
The British Library


The Share Family map can also be consulted on a dedicated web page.

Share family map.JPG