Temporary electronic catalogue for the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini of Florence

The transition from a traditional card catalogue to an online public access catalogue (OPAC) is usually a challenging and lengthy process for any library, requiring manual or semi-automatic conversion of bibliographic records created in different standards and forms, adaptation to existing software and creating training for library patrons on new tools.  Where card catalogues could be flipped through with no particular goal, OPACs always focus on "I know what I am looking for" functionality and usually leave visitors who just wish to explore the library holdings with empty hands. 

But what if we could use AI-powered tools and technologies and well-designed interfaces to speed up the process and make the transition easier? Optical character recognition (OCR), trained on millions of Italian handwritten and typescript texts, convert library cards into free-form digital text fairly well. Data reconciliation (verifying accuracy and consistency of data in human curated databases) for author names with the Italian  National OPAC allows bibliographic records to be grouped regardless of the language or spelling used on the cards, some of which are more than 70 years old.

The temporary electronic catalogue of the Cherubini Library helps students and professors to access the familiar card catalogue, but in digital form, through the institutional shared Google Drive. The AI engine of Drive allows free-form text searches within the cards,  both images and pdfs, and quickly adapts to the interests of a particular user.  The catalogue includes bibliographic information from all the projects and initiatives that the library participated in last 10 years, making it easy to compare the records from different sources. 

Although not as precise and unambiguous as the traditional OPAC, the catalogue supports the exploration of the immense library heritage of the Conservatorio and provides remote access to international scholars and researches studying the history of Italian music.