Linked Data as an enabling framework for resource discovery across libraries, museums and archives

Image by: ...-Wink-... @ FlickrLinked Data as an enabling framework for resource discovery across libraries, museums and archives Andy Powell (and Pete Johnston) Eduserv @andypowe11 www.eduserv.org.uk

What’s coming… http://bit.ly/hmMvP1• report on some work Pete Johnston and I (both at Eduserv) undertook in March 2011• on behalf of the JISC and RLUK Resource Discovery Taskforce• (which subsequently became “Discovery”)• to develop some metadata guidelines for use across libraries, museums, and archives www.eduserv.org.uk

Functional requirement• help libraries, museums and archives expose existing metadata (and new metadata created using existing practice) in ways that – support the development of aggregator services – integrate well with the web (and the emerging web of data)• note: NOT re-engineering cataloguing practice in the LAM sectors www.eduserv.org.uk

Guiding principles• support the RDTF Vision• in line with Linked Data principles• based on the W3C Linked Open Data Star Scheme• in line with Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector• take into account the Europeana Data Model and ESE• be broadly in line with the notion of “making better websites” across libraries, museums and archives www.eduserv.org.uk

RDTF Vision “making the most of UK scholarly and culturalresources by best positioning their metadata for discovery and reuse within the global information ecosystem” www.eduserv.org.uk

Linked Data http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html• use URIs as names for things• use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names• when someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the standards (RDF, SPARQL)• include links to other URIs so that they can discover more things www.eduserv.org.uk

Linked Open Data Star Scheme http://bit.ly/u1O7e3• 1 star - make your stuff available on the Web (whatever format) under an open license• 2 star - make it available as structured data (e.g., Excel instead of image scan of a table)• 3 star - use non-proprietary formats (e.g., CSV instead of Excel)• 4 star - use URIs to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff• 5 star - link your data to other data to provide context www.eduserv.org.uk

Our draft RDTF proposal• used the W3C Linked Open Data star scheme as framework (at 3, 4 and 5 star levels)• and suggested three approaches – community formats – RDF data – Linked Data• 196 comments – on pretty much all aspects of the draft www.eduserv.org.uk

Re-conceptualising the guidelines Not-RDF RDFIndividual Item Descriptions Collectionsof Descriptions www.eduserv.org.uk

The draft guidelines Not-RDF RDFIndividual Item Linked Data Descriptions Collections “bulk “RDF Data”of Descriptions transfer” www.eduserv.org.uk

The Web! Not-RDF RDFIndividual Item “page per Linked Data Descriptions thing” Collections “bulk “RDF Data”of Descriptions transfer” www.eduserv.org.uk

Guiding principles• support the RDTF Vision• in line with Linked Data principles• based on the W3C Linked Open Data Star Scheme• in line with Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector• take into account the Europeana Data Model and ESE• be broadly in line with the notion of “making better websites” across libraries, museums and archives www.eduserv.org.uk

Semantics vs. linking• moving left to right across the quadrants… – offers greater semantic precision within a more consistent framework (RDF) “page per Linked Data thing” “bulk “RDF Data” transfer” www.eduserv.org.uk

Linking vs. semantics• moving bottom to top across the quadrants… – promotes the individual descriptions (rather than collections of descriptions) and encourages the assignment of identifiers (i.e. URIs) to both those descriptions and the things they identify “page per Linked Data thing” “bulk “RDF Data” transfer” www.eduserv.org.uk

Possible adoption path Not-RDF RDFIndividual Item “page per Linked Data Descriptions thing” Collections “bulk “RDF Data”of Descriptions transfer” www.eduserv.org.uk

“page Linked Bulk transfer per thing” Data “bulk “RDF transfer” Data”• “give us what you’ve got”• serve existing community bulk-formats (e.g. files containing collections of MARC, MODS, BibTeX, DC/XML, SPECTRUM or EAD records) or CSV over RESTful HTTP• use sitemaps and robots.txt and/or RSS/Atom to advertise availability and GZip for compression• for CSV, provide a column called ‘label’ or ‘title’ so we’ve got something to display• give us separate records (for CSV, read ‘rows’) about separate resources (where you can) www.eduserv.org.uk

“page Linked Page per thing per thing” Data “bulk “RDF transfer” Data”• “build better websites”• serve an HTML page (i.e. a description) for every “thing” of interest over RESTful HTTP• optionally serve alternative format(s) for each description (e.g. a MODS or DC/XML record) at separate URIs and link from the HTML descriptions using “<link rel=“alternative” … />• use “cool” ‘http’ URIs for all descriptions• use sitemaps and robots.txt and/or RSS/Atom to advertise availability• optionally offer OAI-PMH server to allow harvesting www.eduserv.org.uk

“page Linked RDF data per thing” Data “bulk “RDF transfer” Data”• “RDF bulk download”• serve big buckets of RDF (as RDF/XML, N-Tuples or N- Quads) over RESTful HTTP• re-use existing conceptual models and vocabularies where you can• assign URIs to every “thing” of interest• use Semantic Sitemaps and the Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets (VoID) to advertise availability of the buckets www.eduserv.org.uk

“page Linked Linked Data per thing” Data “bulk “RDF transfer” Data”• “W3C 5 star approach”• serve HTML and RDF/RDFa for every “thing” of interest over RESTful HTTP• assign ‘http’ URIs to every “thing” (and every description of a thing)• follow “cool URIs for the semantic web” recommended practice• become part of the web of data - link to other people’s stuff using their URIs www.eduserv.org.uk

Possible adoption path Not-RDF RDFIndividual Item “page per Linked Data Descriptions thing” Collections “bulk “RDF Data”of Descriptions transfer” www.eduserv.org.uk

Where are we headed?• implication of previous slide is that “5 star” Linked Data is where we want to be• some good reasons for that – rich semantic framework – “follow your nose” approach to getting more info – “small pieces loosely joined” – link and be linked – data becomes “of” the web – relatively easy re-use of other peoples’ ontologies www.eduserv.org.uk

But…• also need to remember that “the best is sometimes the enemy of the good”• recent web history tells us that uptake of complex technologies can be a slow process!• certainly been the case with the Semantic Web and RDF www.eduserv.org.uk

‘Linked’ and ‘social’ can be a win http://ogp.me/• Open Graph Protocol• as proposed by Facebook but now more widely adopted• good example of Linked Data underpinning social activity (part of which is related to discovery)• but what’s more important – the fact it uses RDF or the fact it uses the HTTP URI? www.eduserv.org.uk

I would suggest the latter www.eduserv.org.uk

Conclusions• true Linked Data is a good aim for libraries, museums and archives…• …but our emphasis should be on the ‘linked’ in short term• encouraging more item-level material on the Web with cool URIs (even if only in largely human-readable form)• richer Linked Data can then emerge over time www.eduserv.org.uk

Image by: ...-Wink-... @ FlickrQuestions? www.eduserv.org.uk

http://oedb.org	1072
http://paper.li	33
http://librarians.collected.info	8
http://a0.twimg.com	5
http://www.zhuaxia.com	2
http://flavors.me	2
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	1
http://www.twylah.com	1
https://twitter.com	1
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	1

Linked Data as an enabling framework for resource discovery across libraries, museums and archives

by Andy Powell on Nov 30, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

10 Embeds 1,126

Statistics

Linked Data as an enabling framework for resource discovery across libraries, museums and archives — Presentation Transcript