Abstract
In the age of digital archives and online data consultation, bibliographic research is considered as a key tool for supporting scientific research and study. The online catalogue allows the achievement of more ambitious aims and global interest thanks to its ability to associate data relating to the geographic contextualization of the catalogued editorial products (deduced from the title and content) with the search for more traditional bibliographic data through the inclusion of a specific and standardized ‘field’. Successively, the locations identified by the cataloguer are georeferenced by using GIS applications, which allows the simultaneous view of the distribution of global and local geographical contexts specific for each item owned by a library, archive or museum. The usefulness of such an application lies in the possibility for the library to have a greater awareness of its collection, thus permitting the acquisition of an additional element of evaluation in the management and planning of purchases and donations. In this way, the ability to filter the information from OPAC search will be combined with the basic research carried out by the user by selecting only the libraries in possession of works related to a specific geographical context, involved in different specific studies (literature, landscape, environment). Although this ability is still limited to a few specific studies, the use of tools that allow an overview of the geographical distribution of places could represent an operating standard through the definition of a special protocol. These tools are now used mostly in experimental studies in which the use of open source software has enabled the creation of maps. This paper shows the state of the art of the applications worldwide presenting experimental case studies (i.e. Coos Bay, Oregon; Basilicata, Italy) and also suggests different applications in the field of national and international protocols of library cataloguing.
Introduction
In the age of digital archives and online data consultation, bibliographic research is suggested as a key tool for supporting multidisciplinary studies and scientific research.
The use of OPAC (Open Public Access Catalogue or online catalogue), MetaOPAC (contemporary consultation of online catalogues of different libraries participating in a project on the sharing of online spaces and ‘participative’ cataloguing), MultiOpac (an interface used as a link to other interfaces that continue to exist with their own peculiarities and characteristics), digital archives, open source archives of published and unpublished scientific papers and other material, as well as thematic databases has inevitably required both the creation of a data entry standardized language and the possibility of a faster and more precise query by the user in a global view of data transmission and use.
The standardization of bibliographic descriptions, the unification of computer language and the sharing of ‘common spaces’ in the network (World Wide Web) have created a worldwide literature search, with full respect for local heritage, and have allowed the sharing of data and digital material on various themes and from different disciplines. Therefore, online catalogues represent a tool for more ambitious and global interest aims, particularly for studies, research and applications across different professional fields.
In order to enable the sector operators to share the cataloguing and provide the users with more and better search capabilities, the cataloguing of library material (such as mapping, digital data, etc.), over the last decades, has established and circulated methods and working procedures, standardized bibliographic descriptions, structured rules, has set the correct nomenclature and a common language through the construction of thesauri and has also favoured the use of software for a wider dissemination and visibility of assets.
The use of the Internet for cataloguing, on the one hand, and the common language for entering data, on the other, have allowed any user to access, directly from their workstation, the catalogues of every library in the world included in national and international consortia regardless of geographical or territorial boundaries.
Traditional library catalogues contain references to documents stored in the library in conventional formats. Representative geographic locations of documents are not amenable to cataloguing within a classification system, except where documents refer to well-defined political boundaries.
The use of software represents another great opportunity, making it possible to access the complete bibliographic information relating to a specimen by querying the catalogue through specific data: author, title, subject, ISBN (International Standard Book Number) or the computer code of the bibliographic record developed during the insertion of the card catalogue (BID, Book IDentification). This process returns a sheet specimen or a list corresponding to multiple copies.
To refine the search, during the semantic interrogation it is also possible to enter other data with the function of filters which allow optimization of the search (publisher, publication year, etc.), or to use Boolean operators (i.e. through the insertion of more terms selected by operators such as: and, no, or), thanks to an online network system in which the data interact with each other.
Besides the development of the software and standards for the cataloguing of library material, research has also shown the need to highlight and extract spatial data from the amount of information contained in the printed and digital material available. This is the reason why there are a lot of experimental projects, software and theories dealing with the procedures to apply manual and/or automatic extraction of this kind of data, on how to share the procedures and organize and display them 1 (Humphrey and Pridal, 2012).
The problem involved
Despite this overview on cataloguing, with all the attendant possibilities and added values, the world of research copes with the impossibility of finding library material through the direct geographical indication of the specimen content, especially when this element represents the essential point of investigation for a search, regardless of the discipline involved.
If the reasoning is applied exclusively within the territorial limits of belonging, this limit could partly be overcome through a semantic search, i.e. querying the catalogues by subject or keyword, since these can be composed of geographic locations, sometimes very specific. Such an investigation, however, requires a direct and specific knowledge of the territory, in order to track down the names of the place and define specific areas of interest. Therefore, an appropriate classification and a thorough analysis of the work, like that of a semantic search, are not always useful on a global scale for associating a bibliographic reference with a precise geographic location (georeferenced bibliographic data). Similarly, a user, who wants to find bibliographic material linked to specific geographic area whose toponyms (place names) he does not know, can make use not only of the subject or keyword to locate the material useful for his research, but also a preliminary survey, which uses a direct query in OPAC or MetaOPAC. In addition, a further objective difficulty is the identification of library material in languages and alphabets other than their own.
This requirement was highlighted by Bin Zhu et al. (1999). The authors stress the problem of the inability to retrieve geographic information in the field of digital archives, and suggest translating the textual analysis of the contents into geographical structures visible through the elaboration of maps which detect the contents selected. The question today is whether the web and information technology evolution, nearly 15 years after Bin Zhu’s suggestion, allows not only the geographic display of text or images and contents but also the direct query of geographic data, and whether this is possible through the interconnection with the bibliographical data in its structure of cataloguing.
In the field of bibliographic research development, this paper suggests the possibility of expanding the information available from OPAC searches.
Therefore, these new bibliographical data, in addition to the network of online catalogues and cataloguing rules and standards, would make use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to georeference and make the query results visible through the instant construction of a spatial distribution map of the data.
Possible users
The proposal described in this paper aims to offer the possibility to search for documents of study, which affect different territorial aspects, through a tool visible in every part of the world and thanks to the official channels of OPAC cataloguing. It is addressed, therefore, to all those who need to consult not only map data but also various material for territorial research (old and modern printed texts, scientific papers, archival documents, etc.). In this context also the most ‘technical’ subject areas will not only benefit from cartographic material quickly and efficiently, but will also be able to integrate it with other content useful for professional purposes.
In the light of this, the categories of people who respond to these needs are mainly researchers, scholars and professionals coming from various disciplines (geology, health sciences, history, archaeology, sociology, legal and economic sciences …), who might not know the place names (toponyms) of a specific geographic area linked to, for example, field-survey missions, theses or any other research activity.
The tools, used properly, do not aim at encroaching on the work of specialized staff, but at solving these problems so as to optimize the work of the librarians themselves, responding to the needs of ‘sophisticated’ users as in the case of researchers and scholars.
State of the art of cataloguing
Over the last decades the Web has played a prominent role in the improvement of museums, archives, and library communicability and visibility as well as in the supply of online services. All this required the involvement of international bodies in research projects, research activities, and the development of tools, standards and computer protocols. The applicability of computer tools in library science is tangible and this has aroused interest from scholars, researchers and professionals who are increasingly concerned with the advantages of the present and future developments.
The ability to enter data on the geographic contextualization of the work catalogued (deductible from its title and content), through the inclusion of an appropriate and standardized ‘field’, can represent an important advantage for libraries and users.
At present, during the phase of cataloguing the inclusion of specific georeferenced data together with geographical coordinates is carried out only in the cartography field, whereas the inclusion of places/localities deduced from books, articles, magazines is not undertaken, nor is georeferencing.
Therefore, this paper aims at highlighting a gap in the fields of library collection cataloguing and georeferencing. As far as the former is concerned, the use of the georeferencing of the places included in the library material catalogued has not been taken into consideration in the international standards, despite the needs showed by OPAC users. As far as the latter is concerned, georeferencing is usually applied to studies and sector research which have not been transferred to national and/or international MetaOPAC.
The recent need for georeference maps, documents and bibliographic records has favoured the spread of some specific studies applied to specific geographical areas, thus placing important elements for future developments alongside developments in computers, which are the facilitators of these changes.
Among these studies, it is worth reminding the creation of a georeferenced database by the University of Oregon (United States), at the Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB) that, considering the importance of the coastal area of Coos Bay and the consequent industrial development, produced a map by using Google Earth and GeoCommons in order to locate accurately the geographic content of publications, published and unpublished, such as theses, peer-reviewed articles, technical reports, documents and literature (Figure 1). Therefore, the conditio sine qua non for the material analysed is the knowledge of the specific territory referred to in the topics discussed.
Example of spatial references realized for the Coos Bay, Oregon, finalized to researches in marine biology, as it possible to observe on Geocommons framework.
In this way it is possible to develop a real georeferenced bibliography (Butler and Schmitt, 2012) which becomes a visible online map on which the type of material is specified, for the specific locality, through a legend. In this case, the researchers can collect and process data from state and federal agencies, universities and non-profit organizations, and return them through the network as a tool for future researchers. This project, like others, is based on the idea that it is possible to create spatial or georeferenced bibliographies through free or open source software such as Google Earth or GeoNetwork 2 or software and GIS.
The list of projects which have the aim of experimenting with and creating georeferenced databases and new techniques to be shared includes various important attempts, undertaken primarily in the United States, such as those by Bond Lamberty and Thomson (2010), the Papahanaumokuakea Information Management System (2012), 3 the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program (2012), 4 Watterson and Topper (2007), the Geo-referenced Database for Coastal Cutthroat Trout Oncorhynchus Clarki of Washington and Oregon 5 , Webstey and Hiveley (2006) and the Galveston Bay Information Center (1997), 6 JournalMap, 7 ScienceBase, 8 DPLA, 9 GeoRef, 10 ThisWormyWorld. 11
Additionally, publishers like Pensoft and Elsevier allow for the entry or submission of geographic information at the time of the article submission.
These references contain the most significant cases, of which many are experimental and independent of the specific discipline involved, thus highlighting the need to be equipped with this tool. The JournalMap, a search engine for scientific literature able to provide specific research with relevant results through the inclusion of data such as location, the possible biophysical variables and keywords, has made more than 20,000 items available, with the addition of a georeferenced map. 12 This is a search engine for academic articles and is supported by a number of publishers. The bibliography is made available via download, while the map shows the areas affected by the articles collected and reported by one point (Figure 2). Each point does not correspond to a single article, because each of them can affect multiple areas of study.
Georeferenced bibliography map representing the study areas relating to Sage Grouse biology, life history and habitat starting from 1905 to now.
In order to better understand how the search engine for georeferenced bibliography works it is worth considering interesting works which provide evidence of the fact that the search tools for thematic literature do not take into consideration the geographic location of the research (Karl et al. 2013a). In particular, we would like to show that the geographic research would make access to the potentially significant research results easier (Karl et al., 2013b).
Two projects are worth mentioning:
A project conceived by Harvard University, the aim of which is to improve searching by catalogue through geospatial technologies. This project experiments with different ways of georeferencing catalogue data. By using an interactive map, the project shows that the geocoding of catalogue data allows the identification of spatial relations between catalogue resources, thus showing relations that otherwise would not be evident 13 ;
A project designed by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a consortium of 10 international libraries (natural history museum, libraries of botanical gardens, and associate technology partners) with the aim of digitalizing the corpus of historical literature on biodiversity and also georeferencing data. 14
Among the most important European projects, we can mention the Digimap project, a UK archive of maps and cartographic data developed by the National Data Centre Edina which acquires and makes geodata available for the world of education. The data entered are derived from the analysis of material and documents relating to different disciplines (archeology, geology, architecture, design, planning, engineering, geography, ecology, hydrology, zoology, forestry, health and medical sciences, epidemiology, history, literature and languages). 15 The data are arranged to be recovered through a download, the use of GIS or CAD software or the view of online maps generated by Digimap.
The creation of a global portal of georeferenced 16 historical maps is an ambitious but extremely important aim. The project, supported by a partnership between the University of Portsmouth (UK) and the Klokan Technologies GmbH (Switzerland), aims to develop software for the management, manipulation and visualization of historical maps on the Web, also including developments in 3D visualization for the benefit of libraries, archives and museums. The idea is to identify the maps by using a geographic research, extrapolating the results from different online collections, or operating through free tutorials and open source or free software to publish scanned maps online.
The retrieval and the collection of items for the construction of thematic bibliographies in well-defined geographical areas are more necessary than any other library service for this type of study and research. Three more examples of georeferenced bibliographic research can be cited. Those cases have been studied in the Basilicata region (southern Italy), by the Italian National Research Council, and focus on the close relationship between literature/scientific production and the need for georeferencing any single element of this production. The first application was made starting from the census of the bibliographic sources on palaeontology in Basilicata, with the aim of taking a census of the palaeontological sites and georeference the bibliographic data collected in order to enhance the sites and make them usable. The data, collected from libraries and entered into tables organized in chronological order, have been restated in graphical form and maps (GIS and Google Earth) and used for the design of a PaleoBas geo-application (Lazzari et al., 2014) for smartphone and tablets (Figure 3). 17
Statistic distribution of publications relating to palaeontological findings in Basilicata for each municipality.
The second example is research of literary sources of the Basilicata region (Lazzari and Maggio, 2014), in the period between the 16th and 20th centuries. This work has the aim of identifying, selecting and analysing poetry and/or prose which describe the geomorphological outlines of the landscape, as well as the specific locations mentioned by the authors. After an extensive investigation, conducted by time period and geographical area, the selection has been carried out through a reasoned reading of the texts analysed. The georeferenced locations identified in the works of each author has permitted the graphical display, the frequency of citations and their geographical distribution (Figure 4) through the use of a GIS platform.
Geographic distribution and frequency of citation of the sites located in Basilicata region (southern Italy) cited in the works of poets and writers (Lazzari and Maggio, 2014).
The third example concerns the georeferencing of places mentioned in the bibliography of the Basilicata geological literature (Lazzari et al., 2013). The georeferenced bibliography allowed the identification of the most and the least studied areas in Basilicata over time, thus highlighting the need for possible future studies on lesser-known areas (Figure 5).
The figure shows the citation frequency of the sites (toponyms) cited in the geological literature of Basilicata. The recognition of the localities has been designed with respect to the cartographic base in scale 1:25000 of the Italian Military Geographic Institute (Lazzari et al., 2013).
In agreement with Haas et al. (2003: 119), according to which ‘geography is an intrinsic factor in many fields of research’, even the bibliographic field could not avoid being included in a specific numeric field within the construction of the bibliographic record, such as the Marc 651 or 034 18 (corresponding to 607 and 123 fields of UNIMARC, 19 the latter used exclusively for cartographic material), in which the longitude and latitude coordinates are included to get a specific geographic location. Therefore, the indexing of the information by inserting geographic coordinates is not commonly done for non-cartographic data. Nebert and Fullton (1995) propose the use of flexible, freely-available software that uses the Z39.50 search and retrieves the standards, making such indexing possible. As more digital spatial information, reports and reconnaissance data are put online, it is necessary to provide a reliable means of accessing them without being restricted to a geographic place name hierarchy. The spatial search prototype, proposed by Nebert and Fullton with the I-Site software, provides examples of how conventional stores of catalogue information not coming from a library can be indexed and presented using known Z39.50 attribute tags including elements that describe the spatial characteristics of target data sets.
The technological advances, however, and the creation of GIS have showed the limit that the single insertion of a datum presents with respect to the possibility of developing data from a geospatial perspective.
Haas et al. (2003) tried to overcome this limitation by exploiting the functionality of the Z39.50 protocol, removing data from some fields (including those mentioned above) and reworking them with ArcView software for the construction of a geodatabase. This approach, proved to be valid, represents a further step in the relationship between bibliography and georeference, also including online catalogues to be considered as an important component in the construction of databases and maps. All this is evidenced by the work on the geospatial bibliographies of Oahu and the Honolulu islands 20 (Coleman et al., 2002), structured to facilitate the work of the persons responsible for the environment at the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) office. It is managed through the same data removal process in ArcView, by cutting and pasting the selected data from an online catalogue and exporting them to an Access database.
Today, it is possible to make use of a further information tool which allows data entry during the programming phase, a function (routine) capable of grouping a sequence of instructions into a single block, so that accurate and corresponding outputs are returned from certain inputs. This process allowed the limit linked to the copying and pasting of data from the input fields of bibliographic records to the specific database to be overcome.
As demonstrated by the above-mentioned works, many have been the attempts worldwide, especially in the United States, to satisfy the need for a new type of bibliographic service.
In the light of all this, our work mainly aims at identifying the projects concerning the georeferencing of library material. After highlighting these projects we are going to create a process able to act directly through the software used in the library and also used during the cataloguing phase. This would expand the network of data sharing and visualization within a worldwide interaction supported by standardized criteria such as those for the cataloguing of library material.
Advantages and criticism
Mitidieri and Ridi (2006: 301) argue that
the Internet has become much more convenient, faster and more complete than the traditional model of library to which we were accustomed. Due to its rapid growth, the network once populated by very few people is now populated by more than 500 million people, and perhaps contains about 10 billion of web pages with as many catalogues and archives as to be an essential tool for any type of study.
The introduction of online catalogues has also transformed literature research, including the number of activities carried out to verify their existence, identify any special features and access the content of a series of documents that meet the search criteria required by the user. In the Web era, this information can be accessed at any time and from any location through a computer, a smartphone or a tablet. The ability to access information, however, does not always result from an instant search, and, likewise, a question correctly put does not always correspond to a satisfactory answer. Sometimes, in fact, the presence and the work of ‘intermediaries’, such as librarians, bibliographers, references, information brokers, etc., is necessary both for a professional use of tools (catalogues) and their ability to perform research in less time and get better results. Technology today allows both the access to information and the availability of different kinds of documents (texts, graphics, videos or audios).
In the light of this, the evolution of cataloguing with the inclusion of a new application for georeferencing the places contained in the books, such as software and other online tools for cataloguing, in accordance with the international regulation for their use, would allow an advanced search that preserves the traditional cataloguing of data, instead of losing it, so as to optimize the specific research needs.
The georeferencing of the places mentioned in the bibliographical sources will be carried out during the cataloguing phase by using validated geographic dictionaries, which meets two needs: (1) following the logic of bibliographic cataloguing, which sets its application on the basis of shared and approved international standards; (2) the use of a global common vocabulary.
The research projects undertaken in this area show, in most cases, a close link between topic, theme, location and georeferenced maps through the identification of works and the construction of bibliographies. However, the use and construction of georeferenced maps, in addition to bibliographies, has the double advantage of showing, graphically, either the territorial origin of an field survey/research or their geographic distribution, from which it is possible to stimulate further reflections.
What is the advantage of georeferencing the works of catalogues with respect to traditional bibliographies?
The major advantage is encompassed by the same distinction between a bibliography and a catalogue. Both contain the main data useful for identifying the work: the former, useful for bringing together works that share a common theme, is a list of documents selected on the basis of the features highlighted by the same bibliography without indicating where to retrieve the document; the second, on the other hand, is a complete ID card of the work which includes the ‘address’ of each specimen in the library, where it is possible to consult it, borrow it, copy or view it via interlibrary loan.
An epidemiologist, for example, who is doing research on rare clinical cases on a global scale will map the temporal distribution of the disease by reading the historical record and, in addition to identifying the document, s/he will also need to access the content by consulting the document itself. S/he will be able to do so on the basis of this proposal, performing a single search directly in OPAC, compatibly with the specific requirements imposed by the libraries concerned. The epidemiologist, however, could also require to search from a different perspective, that is the territorial/geographical one. In this way, the query of a georeferenced map to identify the works for a specific geographic area would allow her/him to achieve the same results as the previous search in a single operation, but from a different perspective. Some improvements to the search facility have also been planned, and have already made to the traditional OPAC research, through the use of appropriate filters as subjects or keywords.
All this will be possible only by building a map able to transfer data from an online catalogue to the network.
From a technical point of view, the advantage is closely linked to computer and web diffusion. Furthermore, it is also worth considering the opportunity for the user to question OPAC and MetaOpac, which is already included in national and global circuits, rather than adopt a traditional query driven by the catalogue. OPAC and MetaOPAC offer, in fact, the advantage of using secure, controlled and regulated data, thus making this application a tool for easy and immediate use, so as to ensure the retrieval of data both through the traditional search (title, author, subject) and georeferenced data.
A georeferenced map that locates the places of interest of a work represents an added value for both the user and the library that, starting from the most studied areas deduced from its book collection, could organize future purchases to fill any gaps. This map represents a tool within a structure able to benefit from it, but, in turn, becomes a digital document to be integrated and kept, considering future needs.
The evolution of Opac in Opal (Open Public Access Library), to access local and remote digital resources, was already discussed by IFLA in 2005.
It goes without saying that such an instrument, which takes advantage of OPAC and MetaOpac rather than the single bibliographies, involves the need to focus on the definition of standards accepted and spread on a global scale, as well as the selection of words and the standardization of procedures to share.
Field of application on bibliographic material
The creation of catalogues takes time and the procedure used has its roots in the distant past, where since the beginning of the 20th century the developments in this field have led to two fundamental aspects: (1) the support to be adopted; (2) the sharing of the rules.
The first step has been favoured by information technology evolution and the Web, that allows a direct access facilitated by a ‘friendly’ approach (as immediate as surfing the net, i.e.: insert data – research – identification of data), a wide dissemination and the sharing of opportunities both for the operators entering the data (who need to build the card catalogue) and for the building of common containers of information (cataloguing card or bibliographic records, by using a computer language). This is the case of OPAC and MetaOPAC, such as the National Italian Library System (SBN) or Worldcat OCLC (Online Computer Library Center, which is a global library cooperation including about 72,000 library catalogues from more than 170 member nations), 21 just to give a few examples.
The second way includes the study, the application and the sharing of results as well the rules based on standard and essential structures – ISBD (International Standard Bibliographic Description), etc.
Each work catalogued on the basis of rules and standards, however, can contain the topics of one or more disciplines identified both by navigating with the help of the subject and Dewey Decimal Classification and making a direct analysis of the document from the title (remembering that sometimes it may be misleading and may not correspond to the content), table of contents, index, introduction, as well by opening some sentences of chapters and conclusions.
The concept of completeness, in this way, will correspond to the cataloguer’s capacity to indicate accurately the discipline or disciplines involved in the content of the work, while specificity represents the exact ratio between each discipline concerned and the specific place of reference involved in georeferencing.
In this context it will be essential to conduct a literature search through the use of georeferenced location flanked by the subject (used as a filter), in order to define only the works of interest.
The above-cited example proposed by Lazzari and Maggio (2014), focused on the landscape analysis and its changes (natural and anthropic) through research carried out on prose and poetry texts published over the centuries, shows that it is not possible, at least at the moment, to make a precise selections of the place names.
The single finished document will make use of this process, while for serial publications (magazines, etc.) the work will be done, if deemed appropriate, on the basis of a single article.
How to standardize the proposal
This proposal suggests, besides the possibility of displaying the map with georeferenced points, the addition of new information that, in fact, will be part of the bibliographic record. As such, from a processing point of view, the work will not be limited to structure the addition of a string, in which to insert the information, but it will be necessary to establish and suggest the rules to be adopted.
The standards, on which the cataloguing rules and global standards for the bibliographic description are based, are designed for any library regardless of the type, size and nature of the preserved heritage and are in line with Svenonius’s principles and sub principles, especially that of ‘[…] standardization: [on the basis of which ] the descriptions must be standardized as far as possible, in extent and level’ and that of ‘[…] integration: [ on the basis of which ] the descriptions for all types of material should be based, as far as possible, on common rules’ (Svenonius, 2002: 67–68).
The rules, by definition, take into account the needs of a detailed, rigorous and uniform cataloguing that allows the sharing of catalogues in cooperation systems and networks. Each library will have the opportunity to take advantage of this, potentially for each type of bibliographic material to be included in the catalogue.
Technological and information solution
The technological solutions proposed take into account that the aim is to provide the user with an overview of the geographical places mentioned in the publications contained in a library, museum, archive or any other cultural institution of a certain country, region or town.
The catalogue represents the organized knowledge, registered and, therefore, described, of the library collection, but, unlike the traditional one, the online catalogue is the result of the study of a system, defined and structured to correlate the recorded data and manage them on the basis of a shared exchange, in compliance with the technological and librarianship standards. Among the several management software and services of cataloguing adopted by libraries, the following features, characterizing almost all the most popular systems, are worth considering:
The client-server system, a network architecture in which a client computer connects to a server to make use of a service, such as the sharing of a software resource with other clients, by using standard protocols (HTTP, etc.);
Compliance with the standard Z39.50, as the client-server IT communication protocol, necessary for web search database information and/or catalogues;
The implementation of the UNICODE standard, which is the coding system that assigns a unique number to each font used for writing texts, regardless of the language of the cataloguing, the computing platform or the program used;
The introduction of FSX, a device for managing link citations in open mode, which is useful to provide the users with contextual links to full-text articles as well as to other resources as defined by the library;
The operator of metasearching, a device developed to allow the user to query many electronic resources simultaneously through a single interface in order to get results organized according to criteria appropriate to the research purposes;
International electronic formats for bibliographic records, UNIMARC (adopted in several European countries, including Italy, and with specifications established by IFLA) and MARC 21 (developed in the United States, in Anglo-Saxon countries and in many other countries), as the standard for data exchange between different applications for cataloguing purposes.
This list of IT features allows supporting the hypothesis to develop the application through online catalogues, offering at the same time, some useful applicability extensions (in terms of quantity and quality). The inclusion of a ‘field’, on the basis of an initial cognitive analysis carried out considering both UNIMARC and Marc 21 formats, is suggested for the fields defined by numbers and coded information: language and country of publication and/or production.
The field should be of variable length and also repeatable within the rules already adopted in other fields.
A structure built for fields and subfields must enable inserting the locality that will be georeferenced without neglecting the information inherent the territory (region and country) in which it is included. For example, if the operator wants to georeference the city of Naples, the field and subfields should report sequentially each of the data showed in Figure 6.
Example of a first level form to input the georeferenced geographic data.
These subfields would allow the GIS software to locate data precisely and georeference them, using a procedure (routine) that collects the data from the subfield ‘georeferenced locations’. The GIS software can process the data and return them in a map attached to OPAC as a digital product always available and upgradable by the library cataloguer.
The scale of representation and visualization of results could vary depending on the graphic management system of online data.
In case the structure Region/State – Country/Province – georeferenced locality is not sufficient to identify the location, a further subgroup should be assumed so as to obtain the sequence showed in Figure 7.
Example of a subgroup form to input the georeferenced geographic data.
This type of spatial subdivision applies the same procedure adopted for structuring the subject in the presence of places, where the generic areas precede the single territory.
The advantage of a hierarchical structure in entering and displaying georeferenced geographic data is immediately useful. In fact, the user, by reading the data and viewing the map, will be able to trace the corresponding bibliographic material more easily even without having a direct knowledge of places and toponyms (Figure 8).
Flowchart in which the sequence of steps of insertion and cataloguing of bibliographic data, generating a map and query via OPAC of external users with the display of the map of the spatial distribution of bibliographic data are shown.
For the field and subfield in question it is desirable to provide the ability to enter data by clicking a series of choices on the list from a drop-down menu, which has the advantage of standardizing the items mentioned and reducing the possibility of error. For the subfield ‘georeferenced locality’, considering the need to achieve the highest accuracy possible and the multitude of possible items to be included in the list, it is desirable to think about the possibility of a double-entry procedure:
by clicking the drop-down menu (in the case of terms known as ‘Naples’);
reporting the location manually (in the case of lesser known terms ‘Mount Vesuvius’).
However, it is worth considering that, since georeferenced data refer to places, accuracy cannot be defined because locations have not defined perimeters and, consequently, they will be represented through points placed in central areas.
An alternative entry procedure by using a map
Another way of inserting georeferenced localities into a form (the cataloguing procedure) could be that of determining the coordinates or the georeferenced locality by clicking directly on a map. In order to show how this might work, this process can be divided into two steps: the identification of the georeferenced locality on the map by clicking on it and the information transfer to a form. Examples of both the sub-processes can be found in the Worldwide Web. For example, in order to identify the georeferenced locality by clicking on map, the map application, visible on http://geoportal.bayern.de/bayernatlas/ and referred to as the Landesamt für Digitalisierung, Breitband und Vermessung (formerly Bayerische Vermessungsverwaltung), should be considered. By clicking on the map (inside the Bavarian borders), an info window pops up, showing, among other things, the municipality (Gemeinde, comune in Italian) and the parish (Gemarkung, frazione in Italian).
In the same way, the BayernAtlas is aware of the administrative division of Bavaria, and a GIS module attached to the catalogue could identify all the territories, whose boundaries are known by the Atlas (Figure 9). The second step concerns the information transfer to a form. The alpinist site (http://www.deine-berge.de) supplies an auxiliary function by converting geographical coordinates into other geographical projections (http://www.deine-berge.de/umrechner_koordinaten.php). It is possible either enter a pair of coordinates manually into the form or trigger them by clicking on the included map (Figure 10). In this way the coordinates are transferred to the fields of the form.
Example of BayernAtlas.
Example of alpinist site.
Such methods could be adopted to facilitate librarians in the enrichment of catalogues with geographical data.
Nomenclature
In full respect of the rules and standards of cataloguing diffused on a global scale and applied by various countries, it is important that data entry should meet the criteria of standardization and sharing of the nomenclature adopted, so as to overcome any language and alpha barriers. For this reason, the use of a universal atlas of recognized value, such as the one published by the Oxford University Press, 22 should be suggested. The shared use of terms and data management, as is the case for the subject, for example, allows a clearer reading of the data regardless of the alphabet of the language used. The language used, of course, for the input of these data respects the rules and national needs (Humphrey, 2012, 2014).
Final remarks
The proposal presented in this paper shows how essential the georeferencing of places is, and how useful it is for several professional groups, such as researchers, scholars and professionals. The professional categories, the disciplines involved and the material examined cover a wide range of research and do not leave out aspects generally considered superficial or marginal.
Given the close relationship between locations and georeferenced catalogues, in formulating and articulating the proposal it was decided to attach the same weight and respect both to the technical sector and information technology (practical realization) and to librarianship (for the compliance with the rules and standard procedures).
The Web confers a big advantage in terms of amount of information and reduction of geographical distances, but at the same time, it requires organization, control and sharing in order to ensure reliable, usable and recognizable information. The librarian sector, in this logic, is privileged compared to other areas of cultural heritage, because it takes advantage of shared, regulated channels for the description and retrieval of individual items. This advantage is primarily represented by online catalogues and the systems for the sharing and the ‘coexistence’ of the same catalogues.
For this reason we propose a new procedure through this sector and the above-described instruments, with the aim of extending the applicability to museums, archives and all the cultural centres. In addition, as far as research activity is concerned, it will be possible to extract georeferenced data and further develop them also by using graphic supports and thematic maps (Tufte, 2011).
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.