Bringing libraries to Web 3.0

Abstract

In the last decade the evolution on virtual libraries forced an extraordinary interest in new methods for delivering bibliographic content to users. Generally the actual libraries provide information from several databases and repositories that sometimes are not really integrated. Our approach implements a conceptual model to persist and serve the information. This model follows the guidelines set by The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) that consists of an entity-relationship model developed by International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) providing concepts to describe the generalized view of the bibliographic universe. In this paper we propose the steps to transform the information of the actual Miguel Cervantes Virtual BVMC library to the FRBR model. The information has been extracted and transformed using business intelligence techniques. The system is build according to SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), coupled with AJAX-based user interface. All the services build for BVMC are SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) allowing applications to exchange information. We investigate the semantic approach enforcing the transition from a static information to a dynamic (collaborative) knowledge space where users are contributors as well. Semantic technologies can offer more efficient solutions for accessing content and metadata. Based on RDF, the different metadata sources like bibliographic descriptions, user profiles or bookmarks, are integrated providing communication interoperability.