Customized OPACs on the Semantic Web: the OpenCat prototype

OpenCat is a research and development project that was led in 2012 by the National Library of France (hereafter referred to as BnF), in partnership with the public library of Fresnes (a small town located in the suburbs of Paris), and the French software editor company named Logilab, which specializes in Semantic Web technologies. 1 The initial objective of this project was to enable a small library to take advantage of the publication of (part of) the content of BnF’s catalogues as semiFRBRized Linked Open Data on the data.bnf.fr Web site to enrich its own catalogue with the result of that semi-FRBRization process, along with snippets from external information resources. The outcome is a Semantic Web application that makes it possible for libraries to share the same dump of FRBRized Linked Data, while they can customize the way it is displayed to end-users and enriched with external information. This paper will focus first on the data.bnf.fr project, which occasioned the OpenCat project and formed the basis for it; then CubicWeb, the technical platform that served to build the OpenCat prototype, will be briefly introduced; some features of the OpenCat prototype will be described; and lastly, some responses to the prototype from a panel of end-users will be analysed.