AAT (NL) WO2-thesaurus (NL) AAT-service (En) Adlib Gebruikersgroep

Webservice of the Dutch Adlib User Group

Adlib is collection management software. The Dutch Adlib User Group is een association of people and institutions that use that software.

Getty Vocabularies AAT in Adlib XML

This webservice allows you to derive and/or complement thesaurus-records in your Adlib, from the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), maintained by The Getty Vocabularies Project. The fields that you can derive and/or complement are detailed below.

The webservice is intended as an Advanced External Source in Adlib. In order to use the service, you may need to upgrade your Adlib software to version 7.5, and you will need to make a few modifications to your Adlib-application. This document provides the details.

Wat does it do?

This video shows what it looks like for the Adlib user. Narration in Dutch.

How to modify Adlib

This document provides full detail. You will need some skill with Adlib Designer.

What's the URL format?

The base URL for the AAT-webservice is 

http://service.adlibug.nl/aat/search?term=

A search is called a query-URL, it looks like this.

http://service.adlibug.nl/aat/search?term=bank

Try it! The default search language is Dutch. English, French and German are supported as well. You specify the language in the query-URL, like so:

http://service.adlibug.nl/aat/search?term=bicycle&lang=en

http://service.adlibug.nl/aat/search?term=bicyclette&lang=fr

http://service.adlibug.nl/aat/search?term=fahrrad&lang=de

In Adlib Designer, you specify the external source for your term(s) (e.g. Object name, Object category, or Keyword) for each field, in its tab Linked field properties, box External sources, field Path to URL. For Dutch, you would enter: 

http://service.adlibug.nl/aat/search?term=%data%

For German, it would be: 

http://service.adlibug.nl/aat/search?term=%data%&lang=de

Note that you don't need quotes around %data%, nor a '*' after it to force right-truncation. The service does that for you. So 'crystol' will get you 'crystolea', 'crystoleum' and 'crystoleums'.

Which fields does the service provide?

The answer to the query may contain any of the fields below.

veldnaam content standard Adlib tag
term the term found yes te
source.number URL and URI4 of the concept in Getty Vocabularies yes, see 1a. tn
term.number URL and URI4 of the concept in Getty Vocabularies yes, see 1b. tn
Getty_ID URI4 of the concept in Getty Vocabularies yes, see 1c.
Getty_url URL4 of the concept in Getty Vocabularies yes, see 1c.
source 'Getty Vocabularies AAT, CC-BY license', always yes br
scope_note Scope note yes sn
history_note Historical note yes hn
term_type term type in Getty Vocabularies no, see 2.
term_type_uri link to term_type in Getty Vocabularies no, see 2.
broader.term Getty Vocabularies' Preferred broader term of the term found yes, see 3. bt

notes

  1. This URL is a unique, persistent identifier in the form of a hyperlink, to the Getty ID for the term. Where do you put this?
    a. Application version 4.5 has a field source.number, tag tn of the type Application.
    b. Application version 3.4 and 4.2 have the field term.number, tag tn, data type Text. You'll want hyperlinks to be clickable, so you'll have to change the data type to Application.
    c. Should you choose to create a separate field group for the fields you derive with this service, then you should create a field with the data dictionary name Getty_ID, of the type Application.

  2. Your Adlib thesaurus has a field term type (term.type) for the term's domain (e.g. creator or material type). In Getty Vocabularies, term_type is more a term term status, but it's values do not correspond to what's in Adlib. Hence, this field could be used for orientation, but copying it into a thesaurus record isn't very useful. Likewise for term_type_uri.

  3. Whether or not Getty's Broader Preferred term is suitable for your collection, your thesaurus, depends on your collection.

  4. For the sake of simplicity, we call a 'URL' human-readable, and a 'URI' machine-readable. The service provides both.


How does it work?

Refer to the image below. Clockwise from top left, we start with a term that you enter into a thesaurus-validated field in Adlib. The service wraps that term in a SPARQL query url, and sends that to Getty Vocabularies AAT SPARQL endpoint. It responds in json. The service turns that answer into Adlib-XML. The fields in the response can be automatically copied ('derived') into your Adlib's thesaurus.

Hoe werkt de service

Credits

Thanks to the support team at the Getty Vocabularies Project and to the other members of the board of the Dutch Adlib User group.

The code for this project is open source software available via Github under a GNU General Public License version 3.0.