Do the LOCAH-Motion: How to Make Bibliographic and Archival Linked Data

UKOLN is supported by: Do the LOCAH-Motion How to Make Archival and Bibliographic Linked Data 16 th February 2011 Dev8D, University of London, UK Adrian Stevenson LOCAH Project Manager

What is the LOCAH Project?
L inked O pen C opac and A rchives H ub
Funded by #JiscEXPO 2/10 ‘Expose’ call
1 year project. Started August 2010
Partners & Consultants:
UKOLN – Adrian Stevenson, Julian Cheal
Mimas – Jane Stevenson, Bethan Ruddock, Yogesh Patel
Eduserv – Pete Johnston
Talis – Leigh Dodds, Tim Hodson
OCLC - Ralph LeVan, Thom Hickey
Ed Summers
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/ tag: #locah

What are the Archives Hub and Copac?
The Archives Hub is an aggregation of archival descriptions from archive repositories across the UK - http://archiveshub.ac.uk
Copac provides access to the merged library catalogues of libraries throughout the UK, including all national libraries - http://copac.ac.uk

What is Linked Data?
URIs
LD Design Issues
Triples
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

What does Linked Data Offer?
Haven’t we been putting linked data on the web for years?
In CSV , relational databases, XML etc?
Well yes, but these approaches are not easy to integrate
Web 2.0 mashups work against a fixed set of data sources
Linked Data applications operate on top of an unbound, global data space.

What is LOCAH Doing?
Part 1: Exposing the Linked Data
Part 2: Creating a prototype visualisation
Part 3: Reporting on opportunities and barriers

How are we Exposing the LOCAH Linked Data?
Model our ‘things’ into RDF
Transform the existing data into RDF/XML
Enhance the data
Load the RDF/XML into a triple store
Create Linked Data Views
Document the process, opportunities and barriers on LOCAH Blog

1. Modelling ‘things’ into RDF
Archives Hub data in ‘Encoded Archival Description’ EAD XML form
Copac data in ‘Metadata Object Description Schema’ MODS XML form
Take a step back from the data format
Think about your ‘things’
What is EAD document “saying” about “things in the world”?
What questions do we want to answer about those “things”?
Can help make data more user-centric
http://www.loc.gov/ead/ http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/

Triples
Thinking falls naturally into ‘triple’ statements
‘ Things’ have ‘properties’ with ‘values’
Subject – Predicate - Object
Triples are basis of RDF
More on all this at http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/2010/09/28/model-a-first-cut/
Archival Resource Repository Provides Access To

Data Modelling Challenges
Archival description is hierarchical and multi-level
Information is provided about aggregation of records, and then about component parts
Multi-level approach gives a strong sense of “context”
“ lower level” units interpreted in context of the higher levels of description
Arguably “incomplete” without the contextual data
Linked Data involves ‘bounded descriptions
Relations are asserted, e.g. member-of/component-of
But there is no requirement or expectation that data consumers will follow the links describing the relations

Data Modelling Challenges
Hub: inconsistencies in data and lack of standardisation
there's actually no content standard in the UK
Copac: not a standard library catalogue
merged catalogues with de-duplication to an extent but cannot be done entirely

Decide on patterns for URIs we generate
Following guidance from W3C ‘ Cool URIs for the Semantic Web ’ and UK Cabinet Office ‘ Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector ’
E.g. http://example.ac.uk/id/findingaid/gb1086skinner ‘thing’ URI
Use HTTP 303 ‘See Other’ to redirect to …
E.g. http://example.ac.uk/doc/id/findingaid/gb1086skinner doc URI
Content negotiates to …
http://example.ac.uk/doc/…/doc.rdf , …/doc.html for documents about things
More info at http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/2010/11/16/identifying-the-things-uri-patterns-for-the-hub-linked-data/
http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/ http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/designing-uri-sets-uk-public-sector

Using existing RDF vocabularies:
DC, SKOS, FOAF, BIBO, WGS84 Geo, Lexvo, ORE, LODE, Event and Time Ontologies
Define additional RDF terms where required
FindingAid
ArchivalResource
maintenanceAgency
It can be hard to know where to look for vocabs and ontologies
Decide on license – CC0, ODC PDD

Archival Resource Finding Aid Agent Family Person Place Concept Genre Function Organisation maintainedBy/ maintains origination associatedWith accessProvidedBy/ providesAccessTo topic/ page hasPart/ partOf Repository (Agent) Book foaf:focus Is-a associatedWith Is-a Concept Scheme inScheme Place administeredBy/ administers

Archives Hub Model (as at 14/2/2011) Archival Resource Finding Aid EAD Document Biographical History Agent Family Person Place Concept Genre Function Organisation maintainedBy/ maintains origination associatedWith accessProvidedBy/ providesAccessTo topic/ page hasPart/ partOf hasPart/ partOf encodedAs/ encodes Repository (Agent) Book Place topic/ page Language Level administeredBy/ administers hasBiogHist/ isBiogHistFor foaf:focus Is-a associatedWith level Is-a language Concept Scheme inScheme Object representedBy Postcode Unit Extent Creation Birth Death extent participates in Temporal Entity Temporal Entity at time at time product of in

Copac Model (as at November 2010 – work in progress)

Feedback Requested!
We would like feedback on the model
Appreciate this will be easier when the data available
Via blog
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/2010/09/28/model-a-first-cut/
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/2010/11/08/some-more-things-some-extensions-to-the-hub-model/
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/2010/10/07/modelling-copac-data/
Via email, twitter, in person at Dev8d

2. Transforming in RDF/XML
Need to transform data in EAD and MODS to RDF/XML, based on our models
For Hub data created XSLT Stylesheet and used Saxon parser
http://saxon.sourceforge.net/
Saxon runs the XSLT against a set of EAD files and creates a set of RDF/XML files
For Copac data created in-house Java transformation program

3. Enhancing our data
Already have some links:
lexvo.org URIs for languages of archival materials
reference.data.gov.uk URIs for time periods
URIs for postcodes, using both UK Postcodes URIs and Ordnance Survey URIs
Currently also looking at:
Virtual International Authority File
Matches and links widely-used authority files - http://viaf.org/
Library Congress Subject Headings
DBPedia

4. Load the RDF/XML into a triple store
Using the Talis Platform triple store
RDF/XML is HTTP POSTed
We’re using Pynappl
Python client for the Talis Platform
http://code.google.com/p/pynappl/
Store provides us with a SPARQL query interface

5. Create Linked Data Views
Expose ‘bounded’ descriptions from the triple store over the Web
Make available as documents in both human-readable HTML and RDF formats (also JSON, Turtle, CSV)
Using Paget ‘Linked Data Publishing Framework’
http://code.google.com/p/paget/
PHP scripts query Sparql endpoint

‘ Out-of-the-box’ Paget view
Linkedhub.ac.uk domain just given as example

Other Stuff We Might Try
Linked Data API
APIs, data formats and supporting tools to aid the adoption of linked data
http://code.google.com/p/linked-data-api/
Entity extraction from free text
Open Calais
“ creates rich semantic metadata for the content you submit” - http://www.opencalais.com/
DBPedia Spotlight (announced yesterday)
“ solution for linking unstructured information sources to the Linked Open Data”
http://dbpedia.org/spotlight

Can I Access the Locah Linked Data?
Not quite yet …
Hoping to release the Hub data by end February 2011
Copac data end March 2011
Release will include Linked Data views, Sparql endpoint details, example queries and supporting documentation

How are we creating the Visualisation Prototype?
Based on researcher use cases
Data queried from Sparql endpoint
Use tools such as Simile, Many Eyes, Google Charts

Visualisation Protoype
Using Timemap –
Googlemaps and Simile
http://code.google.com/p/timemap /
Early stages with this
Will give location and ‘extent’ of archive.
Will link through to Archives Hub

How are we reporting on opportunities and barriers?
Recording these as we go along on the blog (tags: ‘opportunities’ ‘barriers’)
Feed into #JiscEXPO synthesis work
Not time to go into these today
More at:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/2010/09/22/creating-linked-data-more-reflections-from-the-coal-face/
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/2010/12/01/assessing-linked-data

Questions?
Contacts:
Ade Stevenson @adrianstevenson
Jane Stevenson @janestevenson
Pete Johnston @ppetej
Bethan Ruddock @bethanar
Julian Cheal @juliancheal
Yogesh Patel http://mimas.ac.uk/staff/

Attribution and CC License
Sections of this presentation adapted from materials created by other members of the LOCAH Project
This presentation available under creative commons Non Commercial-Share Alike: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/

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Do the LOCAH-Motion: How to Make Bibliographic and Archival Linked Data

by Adrian Stevenson

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