CHeriCoS

Open Library recently announced the availability of a RESTful API to access Open Library book metadata in RDF/XML format, which combines elements of the Dublin Core metadata terms with some elements from bibliontology and the registered RDA schemas.

This service is in an early stage. The given example returns a nice RDF/XML, but without namespace declarations, whereas this book of Edgar Allan Poe returns a RDF/XML with declarations.

Open Library offers several identifiers for their entries like Dewey, LC, ISBN 10, ISBN 13, LCCN, IA & OCLC, so this service could be very helpful when making mashups of data from museums, archives and libraries.

After long time of trouble and a flying splice of the institution in charge the subject-specific classification system IconClass seems to see the sunlight again in a new project.

In a special Christmas edition of the Culture Geeks’ talk at Brighton, Etienne Posthumus will give a talk about "Enabling Multilingual Subject Access to Collections". It's all about a new portal called Arkyves. The persons behind Arkyves are well-knowned by their joint venture Mnemosyne that was close connected to IconClass in last years.

Arkyves seems to offer a service that is already provided via the libertas browser of IconClass. If you klick on a notation, in the bottom left corner of the screen you can access various online collections that are categorized using IconClass. Arkyves offers the same functionality with a slicker UI and different collections:

• Illuminated Manuscripts from KB and MMW
• Den Haag - Netherlands
• French Emblems at Glasgow University Library, United Kingdom
• Emblem Project Utrecht -Netherlands
• Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes, Tours - France
• Festbücher in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel - Germany
• Progetto Marengo - Caricature and Satire (1848 - 1940), Milan - Italy

Plus some additional Mnemosyne collections.

It's an useful approach to access online collection of cultural heritage, but this portal wants your money. Read the brochure to notice that you have to pay 1000,- Euro for a institutional licence, 200 Euro,- for a individual licence (per year or 25 Euro per month) or 10 Euro for a 24 hours pass. At the end it's all about the money. Arkyves is also a OAI-PMH conformant Harvester, so they want you data too. I would rather have a OAI-PMH conformant, non-commercial IconClass Provider for academic use and research.

P.S.: There is a new(?) IconClass-Browser available under http://www.iconclass.org/browse.

Yesterday I wrote about the big launch of the new European Digital Library called Europeana. Today I found that it is down due to the "overwhelming interest". They say:

The Europeana site is temporarily not accessible due to overwhelming interest after its launch (10 million hits per hour). We are doing our utmost to reopen Europeana in a more robust version as soon as possible. We will be back by mid-December.

Back in Mid-December?? What kind of launch is this? It's a portal of and for 27 Countries! And they placed the launch date in every newspaper in Europe and even in the New York Times! What did they expect?

That is not a good start at all ... very disappointing.

Today the EU launches the beta version of its new digital library portal. It combines and gives access to digital/digitized cultural heritage of 27 european countries. At the beginning there are over 2 million records. The major part of 52% is provided by France, whereas Germany's contribution is only by 1%.

Today the server is mostly down due to the vast rush on the domain. But in a few days you should take a look at: http://www.europeana.eu/.