Iconoteca: A Digital Repository by Biblioteca dell’Accademia di architettura

Abstract

Iconoteca went live on May 26 2020, after two years of study and work to create a digital repository suitable to preserve and disseminate our photographic collection. Biblioteca dell’Accademia di architettura holds ca. 100,000 analogic photographic items, most of them rare and unique pieces that are part of archival and bibliographic collections: they are related to a specific cultural context that we need to valorize through a scientific description of each image. Scientific is archived using international standards for cataloging; applying schemas for structure and syntax of metadata; creating controlled lists, vocabularies and a geographical thesaurus to uniform field content in order make exchanges easy. As we decided to run an Italian/English web site, since our academic community is international, we have choosen to rely on Getty Vocabulary Program for the English authorial references while Italian key words are taken both from Nuovo Soggettario Thesaurus and from Getty itself, since we are officially contributors for their vocabulary program. Authority files and cultural objects are identified also with Wikidata identifier, because we are working to realize a LOD data ambient. From the beginning, we decided to release our data and images free, according to their intellectual rights: they are both precious study objects for our patrons, interested in themes such as art, archaeology, architecture, infrastructures and territories development, as for external users.