1 BeWeB: a Cross-Portal for Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage
BeWeB1 – ‘Beni ecclesiastici in web’ – is the cross-portal that highlights and displays ecclesiastical cultural heritage that is managed and preserved by entities of the Catholic Church in Italy, providing a cross-sectoral and integrated outlook on cultural heritage with a shared ecclesial identity.
Of course, BeWeB is a lot more than just an interface to retrieve survey data on ecclesiastical cultural heritage, since it represents and expresses the identity value of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of communities whose stories are told by cultural heritage itself. Therefore, it aims to offer an overall view of diocesan and consecrated life communities, their identity values, and the cultural and evangelical service they provide through their architectural heritage (starting with churches) and museums, archives, and libraries, as well as the cultural institutions they manage.
BeWeB defines the landscape of the Church’s cultural heritage, where ‘landscape’ is used in the sense of being a broader concept: as the encounter of history and geography, a product of cultures that live in time and work in space.2 The portal is part of this cultural process and contributes to ‘reviving’ our heritage, by bringing it back into our life journey.3 Communities have already taken part in cognitive and descriptive processes regarding their heritage, and are now actively involved in development activities, aimed at restoring the original role of places and objects. In so doing, they foster their identity and serve the Church.
“It did not all begin with us, nor will it all end with us, and so it does us good to look back at our past experiences which have brought us to the present.”4 These words of Pope Francis remind us of our responsibility to cherish the memory and achievements of those who came before us in order to pass them on to those who will come after us. This reflection takes on an even greater significance when it refers to our cultural offering and is addressed to the many workers who are active in the field of cultural heritage: nowadays their job requires an ever greater professionalism and specific training, since their skills far exceed the tasks that have been traditionally entrusted to them.
The National Office for Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage and Religious Buildings (BCE)5 of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI),6 which coordinates local planning activities and runs the BeWeB portal, was established in 2016 and took over the responsibilities of two different offices that previously and specifically worked on cultural heritage and religious buildings within the General Secretariat of CEI. Its primary aims – on behalf of particular churches, i.e. dioceses7 – include fostering the knowledge and protection of the Church’s heritage, which is fundamental for its appropriate and consistent management and development in the future. It provides an overall outlook on issues related to the knowledge, protection, management, and enhancement of both older assets (previously managed by the National Office for Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage, UNBCE) and newer assets (previously managed by the National Service for Religious Buildings, SNEC). It acts as a reference, observer, and technical representative of the Church’s interests at national level and performs an important liaison role, by establishing relations and fostering knowledge, contacts, and collaboration with different institutions.8
The BCE National Office fulfils its mission of service, including to end-point users, and asset enhancement through the BeWeB portal. This project has a solid foundation, since it relies on survey and data collection activities that the BCE National Office coordinates throughout Italy. Systematic surveys began in 1996 with historical and artistic assets9 and have, over time, expanded, evolved, and become more specialised, to include buildings (in 2003),10 archives (in 2004),11 and books (in 2006),12 cultural institutions (in 2011),13 sound and audio-visual assets (in 2019)14 and photographic material (in 2020).15 The next task will be to promote the knowledge, description, and transmission of intangible assets, which are fundamental to document the history of faith, worship, and our love of God.16
From the very beginning, all survey projects have focused on digitising descriptions of surveyed items, according to guidelines17 provided at central level.18 Original files (master files in tiff format) and copies used for consultation (in compressed jpeg format) are preserved in dioceses and cultural institutions. The BCE National Office ensures their availability on the BeWeB network, and also takes care of keeping a double copy of the master file. The importance of digital resources is increasing within the portal: the digital showcase is currently being designed and will adopt the IIIF standard to facilitate visualisation, sharing, handling, and annotation activities.
The BCE National Office coordinates all projects centrally and ensures a uniform methodological approach and compliance with industry standards, as well as the necessary institutional dialogue.
Coordination and scientific guidance, compliance with standards, the sharing of methodologies and survey approaches, as well as the use of centralised tools, all foster the establishment of institutional networks of people and professionals, the uniformity and quality of surveys, as well as the sharing of perspectives. Staff members actively participate in the different phases of planning, implementation, and improvement in their respective sectors: they mostly work on technical-operational issues, but are all very much aware of the pastoral care that is implied in the cultural heritage that is preserved, described, publicised, and enhanced in the particular churches of origin, and therefore is fundamental for BeWeB’s quality offering.19 Currently, three bottom-up working tables dedicated to Communities and Networks, Digital Development, and Enhancement have been set up and are coordinated by the BCE National Office, with a focus on the value generated by cultural heritage in pastoral care.20
2 BCE National Office and the PBE Hub in the National Library System (SBN)
In the book sector, the BCE National Office directly coordinates a growing network of 270 libraries (SBN Ecclesiastical Libraries Hub, PBE),21 that are part of the National Library Service (SBN)22 supported by the Central Institute for the Main Catalogue of Italian Libraries and Bibliographical Information (ICCU).23 It is an extraterritorial hub (the largest in the SBN), whose working method is based on typology and functional identification. The ILS cataloguing system is Marc21 native, the only system in the SBN to adopt a protocol based on Unimarc.
This project has also made accessing the SBN easier for smaller libraries, ensuring a good level of service, sharing best practices and methodologies, optimising economic and other resources and, above all, building a network of people. PBE coordination includes the maintenance of cataloguing, lending, and consultation services, cataloguing assistance and support, training in the use of tools, and availability document-sharing areas.
Support and development activities carried out by the BCE National Office are not only limited to the coordination of the PBE library network, but also extend to all other Italian ecclesiastical libraries that are part of the SBN through public networks (at provincial, regional or university level), and are mainly achieved by bringing all their collections within the BeWeB portal, as we shall see in more detail below.
3 The Evolution of BeWeB Portal as a Showcase for Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage
The BeWeB portal was launched in 200024 as a virtual showcase for the survey of the Church’s cultural heritage, but with the clear aim of turning it into a popularisation and dissemination portal.25 Today, it increasingly testifies to the emotional bond that exists between communities and their cultural heritage, emphasising the relationship of faith, devotion, and love between the people of God and the Lord.
Starting from the solid foundations given by the pervasiveness and quality of surveys, the BeWeB portal acts as a megaphone for the collections of ecclesiastical institutions and dioceses, by making available not only catalogues, but also tools for their enhancement. Hence, it gives resonance to activities carried out by institutions and works as an editorial tool to publish content stored in its database, with the aim of facilitating, through thematic in-depth analysis, the sharing of resources and information and increasing the understanding and interpretation of diocesan heritage by a broader audience and not only by specialists.
The cross-sectoral and integrated interpretation of cultural resources is achieved thanks to the adoption of an entity-relationship model that integrates book, archival, historical-artistic, and architectural resources (with databases that are constantly being updated and increased); together with glossary entries, descriptive pages of dioceses and ecclesiastical regions, ecclesiastical cultural institutions and person/family/entity authority data. The portal also includes and provides information on events and thematic insights.
All of this is the work of an editorial staff that is scattered throughout the Italian territory, and is the result of the description and cataloguing work of ecclesiastical cultural heritage promoted by the BCE National Office and carried out by dioceses and cultural institutions in Italy. It is a complex structure whose main challenge is to keep the balance between high specialisation, massive amounts of data,26 and simple communication of content and data.
BeWeB’s home page27 shows how different kinds of ecclesiastical cultural heritage have been integrated. It displays the main available content by highlighting thematic in-depth studies, with the aim of providing traditional interpretation keys as well as pastoral, catechetical, liturgical, and more generally theological interpretations. The content is the result of the editorial and analytical work carried out by dioceses and institutions that, through their documents and assets, uncover special content and provide access to insights and studies.28 In this way, assets are presented within their context and an overall cultural project, avoiding the risk of being reduced to “a separate and exceptional show.”29 Promotional information about events, exhibitions, or seminars that dioceses and institutions organise in their local area is also provided, via links and in-depth information with descriptions of the cultural heritage showcased in the event and related institutions.
The richness of the portal lies in the heritage that is described within it, which is placed at the centre of all additional editorial content, but the way the portal presents data is also important. For example:
Search functions that enable queries throughout the database are characteristic and essential features: they include intuitive questions such as What? Where? In which content category? In addition to in-depth geographical and chronological analyses and filtering by person/family/entity.
Search results (which can be displayed as a list, gallery, on a map or time line) highlight the many categories in which BeWeB has found results, with the possibility of filtering them by category, geographical location, history and presence of digital images and, where applicable, by the specific filters of individual cultural sectors.
4 The Inclusion of Different Standards and Different Materials in BeWeB
BeWeB does not rely on a common descriptive standard for different cultural domains, but on mapping and data deconstruction systems, to account for each sector’s unaltered descriptive approach and, hence, for the richness of original descriptions. This allows each sector to adopt distinctive solutions and keep up with the developments and changes in reference standards. It also allows for the introduction of services and the inclusion of sections, special content and exhibition methods that are peculiar to each type of cultural asset. For book resources, for example, the portal includes specialised sections that are the result of an agreement with the Italian religious publishers’ portal, Rebecca Libri.30 Hence, in addition to multidisciplinary access to resources in the portal’s home page, each cultural domain provides advanced sectoral search interfaces, with useful navigation filters that are tailored to specialised users. Therefore, resource integration is achieved through thematic content in which in-depth analysis, context, and connections are provided, as well as through search capabilities that allow for multidisciplinary results to be extracted.
The next update of the portal, which is constantly evolving, will provide a further step forward: individual resources will be integrated through mutual interconnections. Resource descriptions will include links to other resources, even if they belong to different categories; links will originate from cataloguing and location data, editorial contributions, centrally defined correspondences, and website navigation data.
Person/family/entity access points are the main junctions and connections between proximate disciplinary domains. For example, Access point control31 is crucially important in a description and cataloguing system that is distributed throughout the country (and accessed about 3,000 professionals, including librarians, archivists, art historians, and architects, involved in cultural heritage projects), and which aims to enable cross-sectoral queries involving different cultural resources in the portal.
The prerequisite to achieve a broad integration of different kinds of cultural resources was the focus on quality in data collection. And, in this case as well, the methodological choice made was not to apply a common syntax for the form of the access point name, but to provide an aggregating access point – AF CEI cross-domain.32 This is a cluster of equivalent access points that refer to the same entity; it is generated by a clustering system that guides the selection of names found in different description systems according to the relevant cultural domain (book, historical-artistic, archival, and architectural assets).
Managing and controlling authority data requires rigorous and consistent data acquisition and processing, but it offers maximum potential and quality of results by enabling more cross-sectoral queries and the opening to other information systems with which data are exchanged. The controlled access point is displayed in the portal, together with biographical and historical information and links to other external international sources (mainly VIAF and ISNI) or in-depth resources (such as Wikipedia and the Treccani online encyclopaedia), and is enriched by these links with other entities. In this way, information is provided not only on the entities that have a responsibility in relation to assets (e.g. producer of, author of, or designer of), but also provides users with all necessary elements to recognise the cultural (historical-doctrinal) context related to the location of entities and their mutual relationships, thus expanding their informative potential.
The choice of descriptive standards characterising different areas also enables another important function: the inclusion in the portal of descriptions that are generated through different formats and management systems, in addition to different types of resources. The end goal is to unify the collections of Italian ecclesiastical institutions, in order to allow for one single search access, from an interdisciplinary point of view, to the cultural heritage owned by the Church.
The first experience in this sense was made in the bibliographic domain.33 The bibliographic collections included in BeWeB, as already mentioned, actually come from the ecclesiastical libraries that are part of the National Library Service, regardless of the network to which they belong (therefore also including libraries that are not part of the PBE network), and regardless of the application and bibliographic format they have adopted.34
Another step in this direction was taken thanks to the agreement35 signed with the Faculty of Theology of Triveneto (FTTr), that enabled BeWeB to add the cataloguing descriptions of materials that are not shared through the SBN Index (i.e., Bachelor degree and Ph.D. dissertations, but this model can potentially be extended, if quality source data are provided).
A further step towards the unification of collections was made in July 2020, when the BeWeB portal started including descriptions and images of manuscripts preserved in church-owned institutions that are part of the database of the Census of Manuscripts in Italian Libraries36 coordinated by the ICCU.37 Manuscript descriptions fall under the category of book assets, integrated with ancient and modern bibliographical material.38 In the portal, the documentary context is enhanced – with the inclusion of the description level of both individual manuscripts and manuscript collections – and hierarchical links are highlighted (between the collections and the preserving institution, or between the collections and the manuscripts contained therein, or even between the composite manuscript and its individual codicological units) as well as horizontal links (e.g. between manuscripts of the same collection). In order to ensure the greatest possible degree of detail, in addition to the intuitive query functions provided for multidisciplinary searches, the library portal offers both an advanced sectoral search, including modern, ancient, manuscript and audio-visual items, and a dedicated search for manuscript records, whereby the database can be queried with specialised fields and filters.
The bibliographical records coming from these separate source systems are brought together and standardised in BeWeB and are enriched by the portal’s cross-sectoral structure, which aims to build a network for sharing the complexity of library services.
5 New Services for the End-Point Users of BeWeB
Born as a showcase for the survey of ecclesiastical cultural heritage that has evolved into a dissemination portal, BeWeB is undergoing a further transformation and now provides different services: not only information, but also support for research work and access to services. Due to the nature of this service and the role libraries traditionally play in this field, the starting point is book assets – even for this important new change that is being introduced with BeWeB. When we talk about front-office and user support, we are talking about libraries.39
Since 2019, BeWeB readers who refer to SBN Hub of Ecclesiastical Libraries can access online and reserved-area services to facilitate the independent and direct use of libraries and their collections. The system includes an online pre-registration form,40 through which users can input the required data for their reader card, which can then be validated by any of the libraries of the network.
Registered readers can: check the availability of a publication in one of the libraries of the PBE from the BeWeB OPAC;41 request to borrow a book; request to consult a publication by indicating the preferred day; check the status of past and current readings in all libraries participating in the network; manage a list of favourite searches; and receive notifications on the availability of new titles they might be interested in. Network librarians can rely on a management system to visualise requests, reservations, and transactions in real time, through which they can capture usage and service data on readers and transactions, which is critical for devising service policies and updating collections.
6 A New Environment of Information for the Church
Integration in BeWeB does not apply only to ecclesiastical cultural heritage, but also to the planning of services through discussions involving different subjects and the identification of users’ actual needs.42 This is based on a shared work method among institutions (MAB: museums, archives, and libraries).43 The MAB method allows professionals to engage in dialogue, creating an ideal environment in which tradition and propensity for innovation in each sector are shared and made available to others in a spirit of service, fostering a renewed mentality, that is mutually enriched, and a different approach to problems that is gradually finding its way in the solutions and developments offered by BeWeB.44
But the ultimate goal of a portal like BeWeB, through its showcase, services, and popularising potential, is to build a circular environment of information, where institutions become the drivers behind the life of the Church and culture,45 like town squares in which people meet not to highlight differences, but to find shared traits, for the growth of mankind, and where BeWeB must play an even greater role.46 A place where communities tell their past, present and future history through their cultural heritage, with the attention and pastoral affection of those who have created and implemented it, in addition to the scientific rigor of the scholars who have surveyed it.
This place must reach out to people, offering new ways to experience content that can convey to them the experience of assets, places, religious traditions, and cultures, as if they were taking part in an in-person visit.
BeWeB’s next challenge will therefore be to focus on the people who inhabit the landscape of the Church, who live out their cultural heritage and feel the need to tell everybody about it, also by displaying moments of daily life that are immortalised through new social platforms.
And recently, from 1 February 2022, Fr. Luca Franceschini took over the direction of the BCE National Office, taking up the heritage of Fr. Valerio Pennasso.
An office and a portal that are constantly evolving!
Bibliography
Agreement “SBN Ecclesiastico,” 16 January 2018. https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/Convenzione_ICCU_BCE__16.01.2018.pdf.
Belfiore, Adriano and Sergio Bellini, Francesca Maria D’Agnelli, Claudia Guerrieri. “Le nuove linee guida per i progetti di digitalizzazione del patrimonio archivistico e librario ecclesiastico: Indirizzi e buone pratiche.” In Atti del Convegno Digitalizzazione del patrimonio culturale – Linee guida, standard, esperienze, (Macerata, 17–18 ottobre 2019) (In press).
BeWeb 2020: vent’anni del portale. Rome: Gangemi, 2020.
BeWeB: Beni culturali ecclesiastici in web. https://beweb.chiesacattolica.it/.
“Le biblioteche ecclesiastiche: lineamenti di un progetto condiviso. Atti del convegno, Roma 2006.” Bollettino di informazione ABEI 15 (2006) 3.
Busolini, Daniele and Francesca Maria D’Agnelli, Laura Gavazzi, Luana Greco, Valerio Pennasso. “BeWeB: un giovane progetto che compie vent’anni.” DigItalia: Rivista del digitale nei beni culturali 1 (2021): 89–100. http://digitalia.sbn.it/article/view/2782.
Caputo, Gianmatteo. “Il portale dei beni culturali ecclesiastici BeWeB.” DigItalia: Rivista del digitale nei beni culturali 2 (2013): 108–116. http://digitalia.sbn.it/article/view/830.
CEI-A Censimento delle Chiese: Censimento dei Beni Culturali secondo gli standards dell’Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, edited by Gianmatteo Caputo. versione 3, 2016. http://www.chieseitaliane.chiesacattolica.it/chieseitaliane/documenti/guidacc.pdf.
Censimento dei manoscritti delle biblioteche italiane dell’ICCU – MANUS ON LINE. https://manus.iccu.sbn.it/.
Codice dei beni culturali e del paesaggio, d.lgs. 42/2004, art. 131.
Conferenza Episcopale Italiana. “Convenzione BCE-FTTr per la visibilità delle Tesi,” 23 October 2018. https://www.chiesacattolica.it/.
“Convenzione BCE-FTTr per la visibilità delle Tesi.” 23 October 2018. https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/20210208115530724.pdf.
D’Agnelli, Francesca Maria. “Biblioteche ecclesiastiche tra Polo SBN (PBE) e Anagrafe degli istituti culturali (AICE): l’affermarsi di un’identità aperta a nuove sfide.” In Archivi e biblioteche ecclesiastiche del Terzo millennio: Dalla tradizione conservativa all’innovazione dei servizi, edited by Ufficio Nazionale per i beni culturali ecclesiastici della CEI, 179–195. Rome: Gangemi, 2012.
D’Agnelli, Francesca Maria and Laura Gavazzi. “Inventariazione informatizzata dei beni storici e artistici mobili delle diocesi italiane.” In Osservazione, studio e analisi dei processi della catalogazione: Verso un Osservatorio per lo Stato e le Regioni, edited by Alessandro F. Leon and Elena Plances, Rapporto 3, 57–60. Rome: ICCD, 2007.
D’Agnelli, Francesca Maria and Silvia Gallarato, Maria Teresa Rizzo. “Istituti culturali ecclesiastici: una visione generativa, inclusiva, sostenibile e prospettica.” DigItalia 14, no. 2 (2019): 62–86.
D’Agnelli, Francesca Maria and Maria Teresa Rizzo. “Raccontare il patrimonio religioso: identità ed etica nella restituzione sul portale Beweb.” In Nessuno poteva aprire il libro…: Miscellanea di studi e testimonianze per i settant’anni di fr. Silvano Danieli, OSM, edited by Mauro Guerrini, 113–130. Florence: Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2019. https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/Danieli_ D’Agnelli13pdf.pdf.
“Gli authority data per l’integrazione cross-domain dei beni culturali: riflessioni su un approccio alla lettura trasversale dei beni culturali della Chiesa cattolica italiana, a cura del Gruppo di lavoro sugli authority file dell’Ufficio per i beni culturali ecclesiastici e l’edilizia di culto della CEI.” AIB studi 57, no. 1 (2017): 106–108. https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/2_Authority_data_per_l%E2%80%99integrazione_cross-domain_dei_beni_culturali.pdf.
“L’integrazione dei manoscritti nel catalogo di BeWeB: Atti on line del Webinar, martedì 6 ottobre 2020.” https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/2020/11/04/lintegrazione-dei-manoscritti-nel-catalogo-di-beweb-2/.
Istituto Centrale per il catalogo unico delle biblioteche italiane e per le informazioni bibliografiche (ICCU). https://www.iccu.sbn.it/it/.
“Linee guida per i progetti di digitalizzazione del patrimonio archivistico e librario – luglio 2019.” https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/Linee_guida_Digitalizzazione_8nov2019.pdf.
“Oltre il polo: SBN.” In BeWeB. Atti della Giornata di presentazione del nuovo portale bibliografico nazionale delle biblioteche ecclesiastiche, Rome, 8 March 2018. https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/2018/03/14/oltre-il-polo-sbn-in-beweb-2/.
Pennasso, Valerio and Gianluca Popolla, Francesca Maria D’Agnelli. “Dalla conoscenza alla valorizzazione: L’accordo fra la Conferenza episcopale italiana e l’Istituto centrale per i beni sonori e audiovisivi.” In Documenti sonori: Voce, suono, musica in archivi e raccolte, edited by Dimitri Brunetti, Diego Robotti, and Elisa Salvalaggio, Archivi e biblioteche in Piemonte 5, 469–474. Turin: Centro studi piemontesi, 2021.
“Polo SBN di Biblioteche Ecclesiastiche (PBE).” https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/benilibrari/contenuti/1/Il+PBE+e+SBN.
Pontificia commissione per i beni culturali della Chiesa. Abitare il bello. Florence: Polistampa, 2006.
Pope Francis. Holy mass with priests, men and women religious, consecrated people and seminarians, Morelia, 16 February 2016. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160216_omelia-messico-religiosi.html.
“Raccontare la vita delle comunità attraverso il patrimonio, convegno Cultura capitale (Matera, 8–10 dicembre 2019).” https://beweb.chiesacattolica.it/evento-matera-2019/.
Rebecca Libri: Il portale dell’editoria religiosa italiana. https://www.rebeccalibri.it/.
Rhône-Alpes. Direction régionale des affaires culturelles. Des patrimoines habités. Genouilleux: La passe du vent, 2009.
Rizzo, Maria Teresa. “Il progetto CEI-F per il censimento del patrimonio fotografico di enti e istituti culturali ecclesiastici.” Bollettino di informazione ABEI 29, no. 2 (2020): 75–91.
Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale. https://www.iccu.sbn.it/it/SBN/.
Storie fuori serie: Gli atti del convegno sugli archivi storici ecclesiastici a Roma presso l’Archivio Centrale dello Stato il 27 novembre 2017. https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/2017/11/27/storie-fuori-sede-gli-archivi-storici-ecclesiastici-in-una-nuova-prospettiva-condivisa/.
Ufficio Nazionale per i beni culturali ecclesiastici e l’edilizia di culto. https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/.
Weston, Paul Gabriele and Francesca D’Agnelli, Silvia Tichetti, Claudia Guerrieri, Maria Teresa Rizzo. “Gli Authority data e l’intersezione cross-domain nei portali ad aggregazione: Il portale BeWeB.” JLIS.it 8, no. 1 (2017): 1–30. https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/1_Weston_Authority_data_e%20_intersezione_cross-domain_nei%20portali_ad%20aggregazione_jlis_gen2017.pdf.
BeWeB, Beni ecclesiastici in web, https://beweb.chiesacattolica.it/.
Codice dei beni culturali e del paesaggio, d.lgs. 42/2004, art. 131: “Per paesaggio si intende il territorio espressivo di identità, il cui carattere deriva dall’azione di fattori naturali, umani e dalle loro interrelazioni.”
Rhône-Alpes. Direction régionale des affaires culturelles, Des patrimoines habités (Genouilleux: La passe du vent, 2009), 8.
Pope Francis, Holy mass with priests, men and women religious, consecrated people and seminarians, Morelia, 16 February 2016, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160216_omelia-messico-religiosi.html.
Ufficio Nazionale per i beni culturali ecclesiastici e l’edilizia di culto, https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/.
Conferenza Episcopale Italiana, https://www.chiesacattolica.it/.
Church administration in Italy is organised into 227 dioceses and 16 ecclesiastical regions.
The UNBCE maintains and establishes relations with the Holy See (Pontifical Commissions) as well as with relevant Ministries, and sectoral associations (ecclesiastical: ABEI, AAE, AMEI and civil: AIB, ANAI, ICOM), with which it supports or coordinates training and updating projects for cultural workers.
Below is a summary of the most important agreements that have been signed in the bibliographic domain:
April 2000: agreement between Mibac and CEI on archives of historical interest and libraries
September 2006: Circular letter no. 14/06/4 on the inventory of the cultural heritage of institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life (Pontifical Commission for the Cultural heritage of the Church)
December 2006: Agreement on bibliographic descriptions and treatment of collections belonging to ecclesiastical libraries
July 2008: Signing of an agreement between Mibac and CEI for the Ecclesiastical Libraries Centre
September 2010: UNBCE-BNCF Convention for the growth and development of the New Semantic Index
June 2011: Circular letter UNBCE-ICCU for the exchange of library master data
November 2011: UNBCE-ICCU Convention on Computerised Descriptions of Manuscript Records
November 2013: Agreement on Special Membership to Material Evidence in Incunabula UNBCE-CERL
January 2018: Convention “SBN and Ecclesiastical MANUS”
October 2018: Convention for Sharing BCE-FTTr Dissertations
November 2018: Letter on Data Exchange between BCE-ISTAT.
Francesca Maria D’Agnelli and Laura Gavazzi, “Inventariazione informatizzata dei beni storici e artistici mobili delle diocesi italiane,” in Osservazione, studio e analisi dei processi della catalogazione: Verso un Osservatorio per lo Stato e le Regioni, ed. Alessandro F. Leon and Elena Plances, Rapporto 3 (Rome: ICCD, 2007), 57–60.
CEI-A Censimento delle Chiese: Censimento dei Beni Culturali secondo gli standards dell’Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, ed. Gianmatteo Caputo, versione 3, 2016, http://www.chieseitaliane.chiesacattolica.it/chieseitaliane/documenti/guidacc.pdf.
Storie fuori serie: Gli atti del convegno sugli archivi storici ecclesiastici a Roma presso l’Archivio Centrale dello Stato il 27 novembre 2017, https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/2017/11/27/storie-fuori-sede-gli-archivi-storici-ecclesiastici-in-una-nuova-prospettiva-condivisa/.
“Le biblioteche ecclesiastiche: lineamenti di un progetto condiviso. Atti del convegno, Roma 2006,” Bollettino di informazione ABEI 15, no. 3 (2006).
Francesca Maria D’Agnelli, Silvia Gallarato, and Maria Teresa Rizzo, “Istituti culturali ecclesiastici: una visione generativa, inclusiva, sostenibile e prospettica,” DigItalia 14, no. 2 (2019): 62–86; Francesca Maria D’Agnelli, “Biblioteche ecclesiastiche tra Polo SBN (PBE) e Anagrafe degli istituti culturali (AICE): l’affermarsi di un’identità aperta a nuove sfide,” in Archivi e biblioteche ecclesiastiche del Terzo millennio: Dalla tradizione conservativa all’innovazione dei servizi, ed. Ufficio Nazionale per i beni culturali ecclesiastici della CEI (Rome: Gangemi, 2012), 179–195.
Valerio Pennasso, Gianluca Popolla, and Francesca Maria D’Agnelli, “Dalla conoscenza alla valorizzazione: L’accordo fra la Conferenza episcopale italiana e l’Istituto centrale per i beni sonori e audiovisivi,” in Documenti sonori: Voce, suono, musica in archivi e raccolte, ed. Dimitri Brunetti, Diego Robotti, and Elisa Salvalaggio, Archivi e biblioteche in Piemonte 5 (Turin: Centro studi piemontesi, 2021), 469–474.
Maria Teresa Rizzo, “Il progetto CEI-F per il censimento del patrimonio fotografico di enti e istituti culturali ecclesiastici,” Bollettino di informazione ABEI 29, no. 2 (2020): 75–91.
“Raccontare la vita delle comunità attraverso il patrimonio, convegno Cultura capitale (Matera, 8–10 dicembre 2019),” https://beweb.chiesacattolica.it/evento-matera-2019/.
“Linee guida per i progetti di digitalizzazione del patrimonio archivistico e librario – luglio 2019,” https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/Linee_guida_Digitalizzazione_8nov2019.pdf.
Adriano Belfiore, Sergio Bellini, Francesca Maria D’Agnelli, and Claudia Guerrieri, “Le nuove linee guida per i progetti di digitalizzazione del patrimonio archivistico e librario ecclesiastico: Indirizzi e buone pratiche,” in Atti del Convegno Digitalizzazione del patrimonio culturale – Linee guida, standard, esperienze, (Macerata, 17–18 ottobre 2019) (in press).
Daniele Busolini, Francesca Maria D’Agnelli, Laura Gavazzi, Luana Greco, and Valerio Pennasso, “BeWeB: un giovane progetto che compie vent’anni,” DigItalia: Rivista del digitale nei beni culturali 1 (2021): 89–100, http://digitalia.sbn.it/article/view/2782.
“Tavoli di lavoro BCE-lab: avvio delle attività,” https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/notizie/1866/Tavoli+di+lavoro+BCE-lab%3A+avvio+delle+attivit%C3%A0#action=ricerca%2Frisultati&locale=it&liberadescr=tavoli&liberaluogo=&ambito=XD&view=griglia&dominio=404405.
“Polo SBN di Biblioteche Ecclesiastiche (PBE),” https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/benilibrari/contenuti/1/Il+PBE+e+SBN.
Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale, https://www.iccu.sbn.it/it/SBN/.
Istituto Centrale per il catalogo unico delle biblioteche italiane e per le informazioni bibliografiche (ICCU), https://www.iccu.sbn.it/it/.
BeWeb 2020: vent’anni del portale (Rome: Gangemi, 2020).
Gianmatteo Caputo, “Il portale dei beni culturali ecclesiastici BeWeB,” DigItalia: Rivista del digitale nei beni culturali 2 (2013): 108–116, http://digitalia.sbn.it/article/view/830.
As of 20 May 2021, the BeWeB portal includes: 184,989 archival assets, 4,132,530 historical and artistic assets, 66,244 architectural assets, 6,787,978 book assets, 1,824 ecclesiastical cultural institutes, 4,886 person/entity/family records, 486 glossary entries, 39 thematic paths, and in-depth studies.
BeWeB, Beni ecclesiastici in web, <https://beweb.chiesacattolica.it/>.
Francesca Maria D’Agnelli and Maria Teresa Rizzo, “Raccontare il patrimonio religioso: identità ed etica nella restituzione sul portale Beweb,” in Nessuno poteva aprire il libro…: Miscellanea di studi e testimonianze per i settant’anni di fr. Silvano Danieli, OSM, ed. Mauro Guerrini (Florence: Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2019), 113–130, https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/Danieli_D’Agnelli13pdf.pdf.
Pontificia commissione per i beni culturali della Chiesa, Abitare il bello (Florence: Polistampa, 2006), 19.
Rebecca Libri: Il portale dell’editoria religiosa italiana, https://www.rebeccalibri.it/.
“Gli authority data per l’integrazione cross-domain dei beni culturali: riflessioni su un approccio alla lettura trasversale dei beni culturali della Chiesa cattolica italiana, a cura del Gruppo di lavoro sugli authority file dell’Ufficio per i beni culturali ecclesiastici e l’edilizia di culto della CEI,” AIB studi 57, no. 1 (2017): 106–108, https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/2_Authority_data_per_l%E2%80%99integrazione_cross-domain_dei_beni_culturali.pdf.
Paul Gabriele Weston, Francesca D’Agnelli, Silvia Tichetti, Claudia Guerrieri, and Maria Teresa Rizzo, “Gli Authority data e l’intersezione cross-domain nei portali ad aggregazione: Il portale BeWeB,” JLIS.it 8, no. 1 (2017): 1–30, https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/1_Weston_Authority_data_e%20_intersezione_cross-domain_nei%20portali_ad%20aggregazione_jlis_gen2017.pdf.
“Oltre il polo: SBN,” in BeWeB, Atti della Giornata di presentazione del nuovo portale bibliografico nazionale delle biblioteche ecclesiastiche, Rome, 8 March 2018, https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/2018/03/14/oltre-il-polo-sbn-in-beweb-2/.
Agreement “SBN Ecclesiastico,” 16 January 2018, https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/Convenzione_ICCU_BCE__16.01.2018.pdf.
“Convenzione BCE-FTTr per la visibilità delle Tesi”, 23 October 2018, https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/attachments/20210208115530724.pdf.
Censimento dei manoscritti delle biblioteche italiane dell’ICCU – Manus Online, https://manus.iccu.sbn.it/.
Agreement “SBN Ecclesiastico,” 16 January 2018.
“L’integrazione dei manoscritti nel catalogo di BeWeB: Atti on line del Webinar, martedì 6 ottobre 2020,” https://bce.chiesacattolica.it/2020/11/04/lintegrazione-dei-manoscritti-nel-catalogo-di-beweb-2/.
Francesca Maria D’Agnelli and Silvia Tichetti, “BEWEB: tra navigazione e servizi ai lettori,” Bollettino di Informazione ABEI 29, no. 3 (2020): 27–38.
BeWeB, modulo pre-registrazione area riservata, https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/UI/page.jsp?action=area_riservata/utente/signup&locale=it&cas=1621346902722#datianagrafici.
BeWeB, ricerca avanzata libraria, https://www.beweb.chiesacattolica.it/benilibrari/ricercaavanzata.
“Tale duplice prospettiva – raccolta di documentazione competente e fruizione di materiali a servizio delle esigenze del territorio – rende BeWeB un potenziale strumento di partecipazione nei processi di decisione comunitari sul patrimonio culturale ecclesiale,” Andrea Longhi, “Conoscenza esperta e conoscenza esperienziale: BeWeB come strumento di partecipazione comunitaria,” in BeWeB 2020, 70.
“Dare impulso ad un territorio significa lavorare sul versante dei valori condivisi, esaltare gli elementi caratterizzanti l’identità, rendendolo accogliente, propositivo e dinamico,” Valerio Pennasso, “Le prospettive di un portale work in progress,” in BeWeB 2020, 95.
“BeWeB è diventato anche un ‘incubatore culturale’, grazie all’esperienze delle Giornate di valorizzazione del patrimonio ecclesiastico legate alle proposte online e on site che gli istituti culturali e le diocesi offrono a partire dai propri beni: #testimonidifuturo e #raccontidacasa,” Pennasso, “Le prospettive di un portale work in progress,” 98.
“Lo scatto della coscienza ecclesiale … deve essere quello di un ‘patrimonio’ che resta componente non puramente memoriale della storia cristiana grazie a un perenne ‘matrimonio’ della vita di chiesa con i sensi estetici che sono diventati propri della cultura presente. L’alleanza con le arti non può restare contenuto di un ricordo, per emozionante che sia, ma un’azione dello spirito che rende ‘attuale’ l’atto di fede,” Giuliano Zanchi, “Vent’anni dopo: Valori patrimoniali di un matrimonio da rianimare,” in BeWeB 2020, 65–66.
“Nella misura in cui BeWeB riuscirà a proporsi come un ambiente vivo in cui il bene o il documento diventano parte di un processo di (ri)attivazione delle comunità e, in definitiva, della Chiesa, potrà funzionare come tecnologia di comunità,” Pier Cesare Rivoltella, “La forza comunicativa di BeWeB,” in BeWeB 2020, 44.