The National Library of France on Thursday awarded a 752,508 euro contract for further development of its online bibliography, based on open source components including the programming language Python, database management system Postgresql and semantic web framework Cubicweb. The contract is awarded to the Paris-based free and open source software specialist Logilab.

With the online bibliography, data.bnf.fr, the National Library offers users complete reference information on authors and their works. The data includes all works of particular authors, all editions and other reference material. The data is made available under an open licence.

Work on Data.bnf.fr started last year, the library writes in its award notice, which it published yesterday. "This application respects web standards and the Semantic Web. It is based on open source software."

The library adds that the contract is meant to expand and evolve the web application. The software should allow an increase in the amount of data and traffic, offer new ways to use and enrich data and provide new services to Internet users, readers and libraries.

"Finally, the main data.bnf.fr application is to be supplemented by a set of third-party applications, built on the basis of similar software."

The library received three offers, according to the award notice.



More information:

Award notice

Data.bnf.fr

About Data.bnf.fr