I've started my work at BEIC[1] and yesterday I've had a sort of
revelation: their work on METS structural maps is the exact librarian
equivalent of what we do at Wikisource with ProofreadPage[2] page
transclusions. It's clear we can learn a lot from BEIC.
See yourself, this is a scan where every image was manually mapped to
the structure of pages, "chapters" (which are also OPAC entries) etc. on
the left. Doesn't it immediately make you think of the Index namespace
and <pagelist /> tag?[3]
<http://131.175.183.1/view/action/nmets.do?DOCCHOICE=2244270.xml&dvs=1411563364754~190&locale=it&search_terms=DTL12&adjacency=&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/nmets.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=7&divType=&usePid1=true&usePid2=true>
All this is based on an open standard, METS, and its only required
section, the "structural map" (of the digital document).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METS#The_7_sections_of_a_METS_document>
Apparently, no other digital library does this job. BEIC and Wikisource
may be the only ones in the world and of course they don't share a
standard. :( Even the BEIC viewer is a local "hack" on top of ExLibris
Primo, I/they don't know if there's any free software for METS. I didn't
find any mention of METS in "our places" so I run to tell you all.
Nemo
[1] Biblioteca europea di informazione e cultura, where I'm currently a
wikimedian in residence:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:GLAM/BEIC
No article outside it.wiki yet, see
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=27893199 (I can provide
other sources if you want to write something about BEIC).
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Proofread_Page
[3] <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Beginner%27s_guide_to_Index:_files>