The Vitro-based editing tool ("VitroLib") extends Vitro, the open source ontology and instance editor that provides the ontology-agnostic semantic application underpinning VIVO, the researcher profiling system.  VitroLib generates content display and content editing interfaces based on BIBFRAME, Bibliotek-o which extends BIBFRAME, and related ontologies. Like VIVO, VitroLib is a full-scale application built on top of the Vitro core, but customized for original cataloging in RDF. 

We used the VitroLib prototype to experiment with cataloging in linked data using the Afrika Bambaataa Collection at Cornell and also set up instances for use in the ARM workshop and to implement ArtFrame-specific metadata application profiles. 

What is Vitro?

Vitro is a general-purpose web-based ontology and instance editor with customizable public browsing. Vitro was originally developed at Cornell University, and is used as the core of the popular research and scholarship portal, VIVO. Vitro is an integrated ontology editor and semantic web application implemented as a Java web application that runs in a Tomcat servlet container. With Vitro, you can: create or load ontologies in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) format; edit instances and relationships; build a public web site to display your data; and search your data with Apache Solr.

How does VitroLib extend or customize Vitro?

Similar to how VIVO adds VIVO ontology-specific customizations for information display and entry, VitroLib adds customizations for the display and addition of BIBFRAME and related ontology information.  Being ontology-agnostic, Vitro can support the display and editing of BIBFRAME data, but we opted to explore more usable design that could support catalogers in their workflow than that provided by Vitro which is better suited for an audience that has greater familiarity with ontology editing tools.  Furthermore, we refactored code responsible for integrating vocabulary lookups from VIVO into the Vitro layer and wrote implementations for looking up Questioning Authority sources. We also explored how to enable more client-side configuration of property-specific customizations.

Setup and Installation

The GitHub code repository is available here: Github code repository . A series of VitroLib tutorials are available on YouTube which cover setup and installation and Vitro features that are available in VitroLib.

Architecture and Overview

Usability and User Experience: Lessons Learned

Walking through the UI

VitroLib and SHACL

Harvard's use of VitroLib for FGDC and HFA