ICCU - Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle biblioteche Italiane e per le informazioni bibliografiche

Alphabetica

Year

2021

What we do

Communication, Consulting for cultural sector

Alphabetica is the portal for exploring Italy's bibliographic heritage that draws on ICCU's historical databases: SBN OPAC, Manus Online, EDIT16, SBN Teca and Digitized Historical Catalogs. Dot Beyond is the technological partner of the project, together with Inera and GruppoMeta.

A single general catalogue available to citizens to deepen, discover, share cultural experiences by simultaneously querying all the materials put online by the more than 6,500 libraries of the National Library Service and those participating in other ICCU projects.

A portal for discovery and sharing

Alphabetica is aimed at a curious public eager to explore topics in depth or create personalized collections.

Like the letters of the alphabet generate topics, the portal unites data about the cultural heritage of Italian libraries, making it accessible digitally or for physical consultation.

One portal, many paths

Alphabetica allows single-field searches across all databases and is divided into ten categories: Protagonists, Music, Books, Manuscripts, Audio and Video, Cartography, Periodicals, Graphics, Libraries.

Some categories allow free-text searches, while others use controlled vocabulary. The results are clear and organized in thematic boxes. Users can explore a detailed overview and discover connections between resources and bibliographic information, uncovering new research ideas.

Thanks to the IIIF standard and the Mirador image viewer, it is also possible to compare digital materials from external sources.

a computer showing the Alphabetica portal interface

Communication

Dot Beyond, in addition to being a technology partner, also took care of the graphic design of the event presenting the Alphabetica portal, held on 16 December 2021 at the Giovanni Spadolini Hall of the Ministry of Culture.

For the occasion, we produced the brochure, playbill and poster for the event, as well as a motion graphic video depicting the great work behind the project.

Let’s find out if it’s a match