Join the portal
CulturaItalia is an ever-growing collaborative network of public and private
institutions.
The participant-driven project is intended to bring together various players in the fields of
Italian cultural production and access, partners who will be able to contribute to the development
of the portal and thus to improve the visibility of their contents and initiatives on a national
and international level. Museums, archives, libraries and other cultural entities both public and
private can participate by making contents organised into databases available, or by sending news
regarding initiatives, organisations and activities.
The resources can be in text, audio, image or video format, and must be germane to the
thematic channels, and to those representing initiatives, persons, places and cultural heritage
items from sources all over the Italian territory. Method of participation for content providers
Databases
The content provider can participate in CulturaItalia by making available the
metadata that describe the resources of its databases.
CulturaItalia manages a catalog – Index – which gathers and indexes the information
provided by the partners, by means of metadata. The original data will remain on the
website of the provider, to which the user is guided, via link, for a complete consultation. For
example, in the case of a photograph in the Index, the preview image (thumbnail) is visible along
with identifying data and a link to the provider’s website, where the user can visualise the
photograph in its original format, accompanied by all the information and the services in order to
get the full benefit of the item.
The resources of the Index are classified on the basis of a Thesaurus, a
specialised dictionary, designed to manage and arrange diverse elements of information as well as
information coming from different cataloguing systems.
Further information is available in the section Technical
documentation.
Why participate ?
The “harvesting” of metadata on CulturaItalia does result in the duplication of
resources since the viewing of the resources remains available exclusively on the individual
institutions’ websites.
The original data remain “physically” in the possession of the providers, who will be
responsible for their creation, validation, management and upkeep.
The editing staff of CulturaItalia will create value around the information contained in the
INDEX by means of full-length articles which will propose thematic itineraries for the user to
discover the content resources contained in the databases of providers participating in the
project.
CulturaItalia acquires contents on the basis of the international standard called Protocol
for Metadata Harvesting of the Open Archive Initiative (OAI-PMH) for the harvesting of data, and on
the basis of the metadata standard Dublin Core for the compatibility among resources originating in
various sectors. In this way, participation in CulturaItalia permits the provider to participate in
the largest international content-sharing network, analogous to what is taking place at the
European level for the construction of the European Digital Library, and based on the same
standards.
Participation in CulturaItalia in nine steps
1. Presentation of the database by emailing culturaitalia.aderisci@beniculturali.it
and indicating the following information: institution, database in question and person responsible
for the database, the thematic frame of reference, the type of content (audio, text, image), makeup
of the data, and whether or not there are metadata present (eg. in Dublin Core, ICCD, MAG or other
format)
2. Formalisation of the participation agreement
3. Agreement upon and publishing of the official mapping document, in which you establish the
level at which data can be gathered and uploaded onto the portal
4. Installation and configuration of the Repository OAI-PMH (the Ministry makes a versione
with GPL license available)
5. Extraction of the data and filling of the repository
6. Verification of the quality of the metadata by way of direct query in the repository
7. Harvesting of the metadata
8. Verification of the quality of the metadata uploaded onto CulturaItalia
9. Setting the timeframe for any necessary data updates.
News mailings
The content provider can participate in CulturaItalia by making its own contents
available in RSS format, in particular those news items related to events and activities.
CulturaItalia is not a common aggregate of RSS feeds. It is able to import the feeds, converting
them into a normal journalistic content which gets published in the “News” or “Cultural Events”
channels. The content sent in the RSS file must be a document consisting of a title, a description,
and possibly a thumbnail image and link to the provider’s website. The news will be automatically
received by the central editing staff of CulturaItalia, who will select them and see to their
publication in the appropriate channels.
For information and comments send an email to culturaitalia.aderisci@beniculturali.it. |
