The Digital Cicognara Library

Digital Cicognara Library / Contributor FAQs

Please find FAQs below regarding the contribution guidelines to the Digital Cicognara Library and see the Metadata Checklist for concise contribution information.

The Digital Cicognara Library brings together digital facsimiles of volumes matching the titles in the two-volume inventory of Count Leopoldo Cicognara’s (1767–1834) private book collection, the Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità published in 1821. The project applies the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) to present the high-resolution color reproductions of matching volumes provided by partner libraries. In addition to the digital color facsimiles, which are gradually being added to the website, the Digital Cicognara Library also provides the digitized microfiche of the original Cicognara volumes. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation sponsored a project to microfiche the original volumes held in the Fondo Cicognara of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. With support from another Kress grant in 2016 all microfiche were digitized and thanks to the Vatican Library will be available on the Digital Cicognara Library website in open access, making the original volumes in the Fondo Cicognara more easily accessible.

The Digital Cicognara Library draws its metadata from three different sources: (1) The basis and foundation of the website is the full text of Cicognara’s Catalogo, which was kindly provided to the project by the Fondazione Memofonte. (2) The metadata MARC records for the microfiche and the digitized microfiche are regularly updated and kindly provided by the National Gallery of Art Library, Washington. (3) The third source of metadata is provided in a IIIF manifest by the contributing institutions alongside their high-resolution digital color facsimiles of titles matching those of Cicognara’s Catalogo.

Contributions to the Digital Cicognara Library website are enabled by the Getty Research Portal. The Getty Research Portal is an initiative of the Getty Research Institute, which offers free global access to digitized art history texts. The Portal aggregates metadata that links to fully-digitized and downloadable texts hosted by the contributing institutions or their service providers. For further information, see the Portal’s FAQs page and guidelines for contribution page.

The records for the matching digitized Cicognara volumes will be provided from the Getty Research Portal to the Digital Cicognara Library via JSON-LD. This workflow enables the Digital Cicognara Library project to build upon already existing ones and allows all volumes from the library to be searched within the larger art historical context as offered by the Portal.

In order to contribute records for matching digitized volumes to the Digital Cicognara Library, please complete the Getty Research Portal Contribution Agreement.

The technology applied for adding digital facsimiles to the Getty Research Portal and the Digital Cicognara Library assures that the control over the data remains with the contributing institution. Both portals either link to the presentation or display the digital content stored on the contributing institution’s servers via API in a viewer. This also implies that the Getty Research Portal and the Digital Cicognara Library rely on the digital content being persistent and long term archived.

The following recommendations have been made by the charter partners for digitizing matching Cicognara volumes. Before digitizing please check that each title exactly matches the corresponding title in Cicognara’s Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità (1821). If in doubt, please contact the project team at cicognara@googlegroups.com.

The digitized object should include the following:

  • full text (including blank pages)
  • binding (front and back covers)
  • spine
  • edges
  • front and rear pastedowns
  • flyleaves
  • color chart and scale

The following technical specifications for digitization are recommended:

  • format for original digitization: TIFF or RAW
  • format for access copies: JPEG2000
  • resolution: 300 dpi
  • color depth: 24-bit color

  • Source records must include one or more fully-formed hyperlinks to a high-quality, fully digitized text
  • The digital facsimile must be freely available open access (e.g. not password-protected or IP-dependent) and downloadable
  • Ideally, a full-text search should be possible

Contributed records must be in one of the four formats accepted by the Getty Research Portal: MARC, MODS, Dublin Core, or CSV (please contact portal@getty.edu for a specialized Getty CSV) and include the following:

  • A link to the digital facsimile
  • Title
  • If in MARC format:
    • static unique identifier in 001 field
    • please export MARC records in Unicode (UTF8/UTF-8) format
  • A IIIF manifest
  • The Digital Cicognara Library number (DCL#, see below)
  • The Cicognara Catalogo number (see below)
    • The DCL # and Cicognara Catalogo number should also be included in the IIIF manifest itself (see below)

*Please note: If you cannot provide source metadata and/or are unable to meet these requirements but are interested in contributing, please contact cicognara@googlegroups.com.

Contributions to the Digital Cicognara Library can be made through the Getty Research Portal via the following methods of delivery:

  • Email attachment
  • Open Archives Initiative (OAI) harvest

*Please note: If your institution is not using an OAI-repository, and changes or updates its source metadata, please send an updated file to the Getty Research Portal.

The Digital Cicognara Library uses the International Image Interoperability Framework to add digital content to its website. This enables contributing institutions to maintain the control over their digital files stored on their servers and avoids digital content being superfluously duplicated and archived in multiple places. The IIIF technology offers the ability to present digital content and its related metadata via API in a viewer embedded on the Digital Cicognara Library website, thus providing a coherent and homogeneous user experience.

In order to display the digital content on the Digital Cicognara Library:

  • Contributing institutions should provide a clearly identifiable IIIF manifest in the source metadata for each digital volume. (Please contact the project team at cicognara@googlegroups.com if your institution cannot provide a IIIF manifest).
  • The link to the IIIF manifest should be included in one of the four formats accepted by the Getty Research Portal, see the following recommendations and examples:
MARC
856 41 $u [Manifest URI]
$q JSON (IIIF Manifest)
MODS
<relatedItem type="otherFormat">
  <identifier type="uri">
    [Manifest URI]
  </identifier>
</relatedItem>
Dublin Core
<dc:hasFormat>
  [Manifest URI]
</dc:hasFormat>
CSV
IIIF Manifest URL

*Please note: For any of the above, as these fields may contain other URLs, please indicate to portal@getty.edu which are IIIF when contributing records.

Mets: the IIIF manifest is documented as follows:
<mets:dmdSec ID="dmd__iiif">
<mets:mdRef LOCTYPE="URL" MDTYPE="IIIF" xlink:href="https://...."/>
Recommendation to make IIIF URL identifiable: MDTYPE="IIIF"

Please find an example for a IIIF manifest in the Digital Cicognara Library project here: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/iiif/junius1694/manifest.json

Manifests can be checked in the IIIF Presentation API Validator to determine whether they have been configured correctly according to IIIF specifications. The manifest should generate no errors and minimal warnings when run through the Validator.

The following metadata should be recorded in the IIIF manifest:

  • Digital Cicognara Library number (DCL #, see below)
  • Cicognara Catalogo number (see below)
  • Author
  • Title
  • Place of publication
  • Publisher
  • Year of publication
  • Attribution or credit line of holding institution
  • Shelf mark of holding institution
  • Link to the digitized copy (DOI, URL, URN)
  • Link to bibliographic information (further information on the physical description of the matching volume)
  • Rights statement or link to a rights statement
  • Link to OCR full text (if available)

The Digital Cicognara Library number (DCL #) is a three-character alphanumeric code that has been generated by the project in order to match digitized volumes to the catalog entries in Cicognara’s Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità (1821). Please contact cicognara@googlegroups.com to receive a list of all DCL #.

The DCL # should be documented in both the source metadata and the IIIF manifest:

  • The DCL # should be included in one of the four formats accepted by the Getty Research Portal, see the following recommendations and examples (with the place holders “xyz”):
  • MARC
    024 8_ $a dcl:xyz
    MODS
    <mods:identifier type="local">
      dcl:xyz
    </mods:identifier>
    Dublin Core
    <dc:identifier>
      dcl:xyz
    </dc:identifier>
    CSV
    DCL Number
  • The DCL # should be documented in the IIIF manifest under the label "local identifier."
    • Recommendation: {"label":"Local Identifier", "value":["dcl:xyz"]}

In 1821, Leopoldo Cicognara compiled a two-volume inventory for his library with the title Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità (1821). This full text of the Catalogo forms the basic structure of the Digital Cicognara Library website. Each title in the Catalogo was assigned a sequential number (see https://www.cicognara.org/catalogo).

The Cicognara Catalogo number, which is the scholarly reference number for each volume listed in the library, should be documented in both the source metadata and IIIF manifest:

  • The Cicognara Catalogo number should be included in one of the four formats accepted by the Getty Research Portal, see the following recommendations and examples (with the place holders “xyz”):
  • MARC
    510 4_ $a Cicognara, $c xyz
    MODS
    <mods:identifier type="local">
      Cicognara, xyz
    </mods:identifier>
    Dublin Core
    <dc:identifier>
      Cicognara, xyz
    </dc:identifier>
    CSV
    Cicognara Number
  • The Cicognara Catalogo number should be documented in the IIIF manifest under the label "local identifier."
    • Recommendation: {"label":"Local Identifier","value":["Cicognara, xyz"]}

In collaboration with the National Gallery of Art Library Washington the Digital Cicognara Library is regularly updating the MARC records for the microfiche edition of the Fondo Cicognara held at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. The microfiche were filmed in a project in the 1980s and 1990s sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. All microfiche have been digitized as part of the Digital Cicognara Library project and will be available online in open access.

The National Gallery of Art Library Washington is updating its MARC records on the microfiche and displaying them in their local catalog, in OCLC as well as the Digital Cicognara website.

Should your institution be interested in receiving updated microfiche MARC records please contact cicognara@googlegroups.com.

Structmaps have been created for the digital microfiche and are displayed in the IIIF viewer on the Digital Cicognara Library website. Should your institution provide or wish to create structmaps for your digital facsimiles, please contact cicognara@googlegroups.com.

Contact

For further information or questions on the Digital Cicognara Library please contact: cicognara@googlegroups.com.