Use Cases

Interoperability: resolving location based queries

v 0.9.1 beta

Student of history, Robert Chidder, found in Josef Truhlář´s Catalogue of Czech Manuscripts a reference to a document allegedly deposited in the Czech National Library. However, as he discovered later, it had been long since the document was deposited there - it was moved to another place to keep the collection complete. Robert attempted to enter the shelf mark of the document in the on-line catalogue of the library, but this did not produce any result since the catalogue only contains up-to-date shelf marks.

He contacted customer support of the library hoping to get some help. Unfortunately, he did not get any and the only advice was to keep searching on his own.

If Robert had known about the existence of the (Index of Digitized Heritage), containing information about changing location of documents, he would have simply looked up the manuscript on the basis of any known shelf mark, including the old one. But Robert did not know this.

Luckily for him, the team of development technicians from Manuscriptorium, aware of this problem, inserted linkage between the digital library system and the application interface of the IdH, ensuring that the system will make search in all the existing shelf marks instead of Robert.

The digital library makes it possible to look up documents not only according to the current shelf mark but also following all the known shelf marks under which the document has ever been registered. Robert and other students, who enter queries based on documents location, will not be disappointed about unsuccessful searches any more.