Breaking Down the Walls Project: MINERV@ Museo Galileo Linked Open Data

1. Breaking down the walls Project MINERV@ Museo Galileo and the Linked Open Data A joint project between @cult and Museo Galileo Tiziana Possemato @cult // Alessandra Lenzi - MG

2. Museo Galileo departments MG, an institution devoted to history of science • MUSEUM - Instruments, devices and other objects exhibited in the Museum or stored in the deposits (ca. 5,000 items) • LIBRARY - Books owned by the library or mentioned in the BIS and GAL bibliographies (ca. 150,000 works, ca. 90,000 BIS & GAL cit.) • ARCHIVE-Historical collections & institutional archive (ca. 200 l.m.) • PHOTO LAB -Historical & modern photos (ca. 30,000 items) • DIGITAL & MULTIMEDIA LAB

3. MG collections: a common history Our ancient books and documents and our museum instruments share a “common” history • 1599 Mathematics room in the Uffizi Gallery • 1775 Royal Museum of physics and natural history • 1929 National history of science exhibition • 1966 Florence flood • 1976 Layout of the “Book-Instrument” room

4. Breaking down the walls – 1st step Goal “Integrated search” To make available in one single search interface the different types of MG resources, regardless of material type and location (not only those owned by MG, but also those relevant for MG research projects) and to highlight the connections among them

5. MG solutions A non-linear process made up of various attempts and errors led us to the following choices: • To leave the early idea of separate databases and a common search interface • The library leads the integration process • The library catalogue is the starting point of the collective database • Only one database (Amicus), only one format (Marc21), only one search interface (ABL) for all the data

6. Results Collective database Printed texts (books, reviews, journal articles) 273.106 Manuscripts & archival documents 29.803 Prints & photos 6.949 Museum objects (scientific instruments, medals) 1.728 Maps & atlases 553 Others 102 Total number of records 312.241 Records with digital version online 28.579

7. Results

8. Results

9. Breaking down the walls – 2nd step Data sharing • WORLDCAT -MG collective database (books, photos, archival documents, objects) downloaded in WorldCat • SBN Tuscany - MG ancient book collection added to SBN Tuscany and now available in SBN Italy • WIKIPEDIA - Dissemination of MG contents through new Wiki-pages with links to MG pages or pdf documents • ACNP- A 1st tranche of 400 periodicals added to ACNP; links to MG Digital Library

10. Breaking down the walls – 2nd step Data sharing in ACNP

11. Breaking down the walls – 3rd step Project MINERV@ Museo Galileo, with the collaboration of @CULT, took part in the project titled Museal Innovation - New ERgonomic Visit Approach (MINERV@), which led to the creation of a dataset according to the principles of the Linked Open Data (LOD). The data converted in RDF – the data model for coding, exchanging and reusing metadata in a web environment – belong to the Museo Galileo’s collective database: • the catalogue of instruments and machines • the catalogue of the library, of the archive material and photo collections • the Italian bibliography of the history of science • the Galilean bibliography. Alessandra Lenzi - IMSS

12. Project MINERV@ -- Implementation phases Data identification and selection The data selection was made among 250,000 bibliographic and authority records from the Museo Galileo, originally products in MARC21 format. The next step involved the selection of individual elements (MARC tags) included in the records to be converted in RDF; the choice has been guided by the principle of common interest: all relevant information to end users, such as title, author, publisher, year of publication, additional information identifying the resource. Alessandra Lenzi - IMSS

13. Project MINERV@ -- Implementation phases Data analysis, mapping and modeling Each element has been analyzed to identify the use made within the record and the catalog. The goal was the selection of the best ontologies to represent data: • DCMI Metadata Terms • RDF Schema • Bibliographic Ontology (BIBO) • FRBRoo and FRBRer Model • RDA Elements • Friend of a Friend (FOAF) Alessandra Lenzi - IMSS

14. Project MINERV@ -- Implementation phases Data analysis, mapping and modeling Alessandra Lenzi - IMSS

15. Project MINERV@ -- Implementation phases RDF production and validation Mapping sheet was used to implement the conversion rules, in the data conversion framework (in RDF/XML). The open source conversion framework used in the MINERV@ project, able to automate the full process of creating and publishing linked open data, was developed by @Cult; it became the first nucleus of the European project: Automatic publication under linked Data paradigm of library DAta (ALIADA) Alessandra Lenzi - IMSS

16. Project MINERV@ -- Implementation phases Data publishing The LOD dataset "Database Museo Galileo: instruments, books, photographs, documents" was published in DataHub (the portal of the Open Knowledge Foundation, a non-profit global network dedicated to open information) and on the OpenData Portal of Tuscany Region: • http://datahub.io/organization/museogalileo • http://dati.toscana.it/dataset/banca-dati-museo-galileo-strumenti-libri-fotografie-documenti With this last step the data become accessible, open, reusable. Alessandra Lenzi - IMSS

17. Project MINERV@ -- Conclusions The RDF output produced with MINERV@ should not be a point of arrival but a step to start again in the direction of breaking down the walls. The hope for the future is the creation of a system that allows organizations to share useful way and functional mutual knowledge and skills and to interact in a constructive and cooperative in order to increase visibility, innovation and competitiveness. Alessandra Lenzi - IMSS