The vision for National Bibliographies
The Share Family supports National Bibliographies in adapting to changing technologies, connecting catalogues to create open borders for wider access to knowledge and promote greater equality of access to knowledge for the enrichment of the global research community.
The background and principles underlying the National Bibliographies initiative in the Share Family are outlined in the Executive summary of the National Bibliographies initiative. The vision is to:
- reaffirm the role and centrality of authoritative institutions and facilitate the mission of National Bibliographies in curating and providing quality bibliographic data;
- represent world communities, giving democratic visibility and access worldwide to the intellectual and research production of each single country;
- adopt global languages for the expression of local content, maintaining the characteristics that represent the different nature and cultural vitality of each country, its language and its culture.
A diverse community in a shared cultural space, the National Bibliographies (NatBib) tenant https://natbib-lod.org builds a shared discovery environment hosting linked open data National bibliographies datasets. Early adopters from Europe include the British Library (see the institutional portal for the British National Bibliography in LOD https://bl.natbib-lod.org), and the National Libraries of Norway and of Finland.
The NatBib tenant is part of the Share Family tenants.
Here are just some of the ways the Share Family can help to strengthen interoperability, expand access, and support a sustainable open bibliographic ecosystem for diverse communities in a shared cultural space:
- Enhancing Data, Expanding Connections: partnering with the Share Family enables National Bibliographies to enrich their data with URIs, adopt web standards such as BIBFRAME and RDA, and contribute to shared, interoperable data structures.
- From Data to Discovery: the Share Family provides tools to transform flat records into entity-based models aligned with BIBFRAME and the IFLA Library Reference Model (RDA). This entity-centered approach opens new research perspectives when National Bibliographies are connected and aggregated across countries.
- Collaboration that Builds Value: the Share Family provides a cost-effective, collaborative framework, uniting libraries and bibliographic agencies with expertise in linked data. Through this shared environment, National Bibliographies co-develop data models, workflows, and discovery tools that benefit the whole community.
- Shared Goals, Shared Growth: these collaborations strengthen interoperability, expand access, and support a sustainable open bibliographic ecosystem. By offering authoritative, openly available data, National Bibliographies help build a trusted global knowledge network, empowering users everywhere to connect, reuse, and share information.
How to join
As several national libraries have joined the Share Family community, a specific entity discovery platform has been created to aggregate the data of national bibliographies in a shared discovery environment. Members contribute to a collective, inclusive and global catalogue of National Bibliographies in linked data, enriched through the mutual sharing of quality data and representation of diverse descriptions, original languages, alphabets and writing systems.
The process for participation is the same as the one in place for Share-VDE tenant and the other Share Family tenants, as well as the LOD Platform technology adopted.
The NatBib members page outlines the context around participating institutions.
A dedicated working group has been created to discuss the specific use cases for libraries participating in the NatBib tenant, also open to institutions not yet formally involved.
The NatBib tenant represents a diverse community in a shared cultural space where:
- infrastructure and interoperability support the dialogue between different cataloguing traditions such as IFLA LRM, RDA and BIBFRAME.
- Share-VDE Ontology resource description model reconciles IFLA LRM and RDA with BIBFRAME.
- A new Liaison Protocol establishes the relationship between the Share Family and the RDA Steering Committee (RSC), the managing body for RDA.
- The JCricket co-operative data curation tool enables shared cataloguing and representations of diverse descriptions, original languages and writing systems.
To find out more about the opportunities, options and advantages available and to get involved contact us at info@share-family.org.
