Last edited 6 months ago
by Anna Lionetti

About Share-VDE



Share-VDE's role in Share Family - linked data ecosystem

The official announcement for Share-VDE 2.0, including its role in linked open data for libraries as described in the 2022 Executive Summary, can be accessed. Share-VDE has also implemented an Open Metadata Policy, which has been approved by its Advisory Council.

Additionally, you can find the previous Share-VDE Statement 2021, which provides further insight into Share-VDE's vision.

Being an initiative promoted by Casalini Libri, also Share-VDE takes into account its accessibility manifesto.

Share-VDE in 5 steps

Share-VDE is an initiative lead by the community of participating libraries, with the aim of setting up linked data based workflows.

For an overview of the entity discovery portal, see the demo of the Share-VDE entity discovery portal with an introduction on the Share-VDE user experience and user interface design process; supporting slides are also available.

Share-VDE makes available:

  1. enrichment of original MARC data and of the records converted in linked data with identifiers from external sources (e.g. ISNI, VIAF) and with original Share-VDE identifiers;
  2. reconciliation and clusterization of entities created through library data conversion;
  3. conversion of library catalogues from MARC to linked data;
  4. delivery of converted and enriched data to libraries for reuse in their systems;
  5. publication of library records converted in linked on the discovery platform www.svde.org.


The technological components underlying the Share infrastructure are orchestrated by theLOD 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. The LOD Platform was designed with the idea of creating scalable and configurable linked data management systems and discovery interfaces able to adapt to ontologies from different library, archive and museum (LAM) domains, capable of automating the processes of creating and publishing linked open data, regardless of the data source format.

Share-VDE 2.0

From September 2021, the new version Share-VDE 2.0 is live at https://svde.org with an enhanced Entity Discovery Portal and Linked Data Management System. The previous version at https://share-vde.org/ will be progressively dismissed. The load of Share-VDE libraries’ data is being done progressively while we work towards the production workflow; currently https://svde.org hosts a subset of the data of members institutions. If you want to discover the advanced functions of Share-VDE 2.0, the web portal at https://svde.org is the place to go.

To provide feedback on the new version, report bugs and suggestions reach out through the forum https://forum.svde.org/.

Why choosing Share-VDE to give more visibility to your library catalogue?

Share-VDE facilitates cataloguing and exposition of bibliographic records through a linked data based approach.

The platform www.svde.org enhances the discovery potential of library resources and unveils information that would otherwise have been hidden in archives → access to a rich amount of data that can be exported and re-imported by the participating institutions.

It’s an authoritative source thanks to the data enrichment with external URIs (ISNI, VIAF, Wikidata etc.) and internal ones (the URI created by Share-VDE for each entity).

Fosters the collaboration with the Linked Data for Production (LD4P) initiative and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) for the study and application of linked data.

3 major benefits

Quality: enrichment with data from other authoritative sources.

Use: better exposition, data analysis opportunity, reuse in other projects.

Engagement: facilitate information exchange and collaboration with other communities.