The National Library of Spain launches a new version of its open data portal

The Spanish National Library (BNE) continues promoting the dissemination and reuse of its documentary collections. In addition to contributing to the preservation of Spanish cultural heritage, through the digitization and digital preservation of its collections, the BNE also seeks to facilitate citizen access to cultural data, enrich it and encourage its reuse across all fields, beyond research, such as tourism, fashion or video games, among others.

Since launching the first version of its linked data portal, datos.bne.es, in 2014, BNE has opted to offer a new approach to the large amount of data that they generates: data related to the works they preserve but also to authors, vocabularies, geographical terms, etc. These data have a high level of standardization and meet the international standards of description and interoperability. The data are also identified through URIs and new conceptual models, linked through semantic technologies and offered in open and reusable formats.

In addition, datos.bne.es is a clear example of how the application of Linked Open Data techniques and standards facilitates the enrichment of data with other sources, becoming a tool and basis for research projects that incorporates big data or machine learning. This opens up numerous possibilities for searching and visualizing information (through graphs, georeferences, etc.). In short, datos.bne.es is the transit from a tool to locate copies to a tool to locate and use data, enriching and integrating the data into the Linked Open Data universe.

Since 2014, steps have been taken in this direction, seeking to bring the BNE data to citizens and reusers. For this, BNE has just launched a new version of datos.bne.es. This new version means, on the one hand, a complete data update, and on the other hand, new functionalities that facilitate access to information.

Among these developments, we can find:

• Incorporation of a new specialized search engine. From now on, users can carry out advanced searches related to works editions, as well as the people and entities that have taken part in their creation. In this way, authors can be searched based on their date and place of birth or death, their gender or profession. It is important to note that these data are not yet available in the catalogue for all people and entities, so the results should be considered a sample that will be progressively expanded.

• Possibility of carrying out multilingual searches. The Themes search engine allows the multilingual search of concepts in English and French. For example, a search for "Droit à l'éducation" will return the concept "Derecho a la educación". This functionality has been achieved by semantically exploiting the relationship between the vocabularies of BNE, Library of Congress and the National Library of France. In subsequent updates the number of languages will increase.

• Improvement of access to Hispanic Digital Library resources. From now on, digitized editions of music and press resources will include direct access to the digitized resource.

All these updates represent a great step in the path that the National Library of Spain is carrying out in favour of cultural open data promotion, but efforts continues. During the next months they will continue working to improve usability, focusing on a visual and intuitive portal, with easy-to-reuse datasets (for example, incorporating new formats or enriching the data through semantic technologies). In addition, they will go for interoperability and standardization improvements. All these are necessary actions to facilitate that users can reuse the available data and create new products and services that add value to society.

To ensure that all the actions carried out are aligned with users’ needs, the National Library of Spain has also opted for the creation of an Open Data Community. The objective is that citizens could share a dialogue space to propose new improvements, updates and uses of cultural open data. This community will be formed by a combination of professional librarian and technical profiles, which will help to extract all the value from the BNE´s data.