ABC: Amsterdam Blended Collections

Presentation at ELAG 2018, June 6, 2018, Prague.

The Library of the University of Amsterdam is a member of the Adamnet Foundation (http://adamnet.nl), an organisation targeted at collaboration between currently 34 Amsterdam based libraries. Participating libraries are of various types: public libraries, higher education institutions, museums, archives, special libraries.

Until now the collaboration consisted of mutual lending and a common catalogue. Recently, the foundation decided to widen its horizon and also focus on the rich cultural heritage collections managed by their members. Among the Adamnet heritage institutions are well known organisations such as Rijksmuseum, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam City Archive, University of Amsterdam Special Collections, the Amsterdam Museum.

The project “The story of Amsterdam” was started in 2017 with the objective of linking the Amsterdam based heritage collections on the topic of “Amsterdam” in the broadest sense, on the infrastructure level, using linked open data architectures. Target audience: researchers, creative industry, teaching and the general public.

This way the distributed (de-blended) “Amsterdam Collection” can be blended into a virtual unified online reusable collection.

Because of the strong focus on a geographical location (“Amsterdam”) the initial linking is performed on location level (historical and current streets, buildings, etc.). To this end a new central linked open data hub for Amsterdam locations is being developed (https://adamlink.nl, https://data.adamlink.nl/adamnet).

The central linking platform is developed using the HDT based linked data hosting platform Triply (http://triply.cc).

The project is carried out in cooperation with the Dutch National Digital Heritage Network program NDE (http://www.netwerkdigitaalerfgoed.nl/en/), for which it serves as a pilot for the intermediate Linking Layer architecture.

The presentation will discuss the organisational and technical issues of the project on two levels: 1) the central platform (blend/aggregate or de-blend/distribute) and 2) the various local situations of participating institutions, leading to different blending/de-blending approaches, focusing on the Library of the University of Amsterdam Special Collections (using Catmandu as ETL tool for MARC to RDF).