Dear all,

ABES (Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education) and BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) in France are jointly involved in an initiative to build a central national platform for the description of “entities”, including persons, corporate bodies, works, concepts, places…

The challenge is to create and maintain centrally and cooperatively information about entities documented in the collections held by libraries and other cultural heritage and research institutions in France. Key objectives also include, but are not limited to : better integrate into the Web of data the reference datasets created by such institutions and facilitate the use of data by any interested community; share efforts and increase possibilities to collectively improve data quality; develop a shared data strategy. In the previous stage, ABES and BnF carried out a feasibility study, including investigation of different solutions to support the overall infrastructure of the platform. The study led to the conclusion that it would be advisable at this stage to carry out a Proof of Concept in order to investigate the possibility of using the software infrastructure of WikiBase to support the FNE. The rationale is based on the observation that a good portion of the principles and functional characteristics of WikiBase and its related tools are likely to respond to the functional requirements that both partners have formulated for FNE. This hypothesis remains to be proved by the Proof of Concept this tender is about, and ABES and BnF are looking for a contractor that will help them test it. The call for tender is open until April 26th. All the documents are available here https://www.marches-publics.gouv.fr/app.php/consultation/422595 . While the responses to the call for tender can be written in English, provided a French version is also supplied alongside, While the responses to the call for tender can be written in English, provided a French version is also provided alongside, mastering French language is not a prerequisite.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Ben

Benjamin Bober Chef de projet Fichier National d'Entités +33 4 67 54 84 74 227 avenue Professeur Jean-Louis Viala |CS 84308 34193 Montpellier Cedex 5