W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group - 2011

W3C Library Linked Data Group A Summary Antoine Isaac Europeana Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Talis Linked Data and Libraries day, London, July 14th 2011

W3C incubator (XG) activity
Short-lived working groups: around 1 year
No delivery of W3C Recommendations, but “innovative ideas for specifications, guidelines, and applications that are not (or not yet) clear candidates as Web standards”
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/

Library Linked Data incubator
May 2010 – August 2011
51 participants
23 W3C member organizations
VU Amsterdam, INRIA, Library of Congress, JISC, Deutsche Nationalbibliotek, DERI Galway, OCLC, Talis, LANL, Helsinki University of Technology, University of Edinburgh, etc.
Invited experts from other organizations
BnF, National Library of Latvia, German National Library of Economics, etc.

Up-to-date list at http://www.w3.org/2000/09/dbwg/details?group=44833

To help increase global interoperability of library data on the Web, by
bringing together people involved in Semantic Web activities —focusing on Linked Data—in the library community and beyond,
building on existing initiatives , and
identifying collaboration tracks for the future .
Mission

Linked Library Cloud 2008 [Ross Singer, Code4Lib2010] http://code4lib.org/conference/2010/singer

2010 [Ross Singer, Code4Lib2010] http://code4lib.org/conference/2010/singer

Technological bits and pieces
Vocabularies/schemas
Dublin Core, SKOS, BIBO, FRBR
Web services
Semantic Web search engines
Ontology editors
Etc.

Need for mapping the landscape

Investigate answers to higher-level questions

What’s this I hear about the Semantic Web ?
What is the Semantic Web?
What does it have to do with bibliography?
Does it make life better for patrons?
Does it strengthen libraries?
Is it practical?
Where can we get some?
http://www.slideshare.net/stuartweibel/semantic-web-technologies-changing-bibliographic-descriptions

Various activities
Discussions
Presentations in various fora – libraries and beyond
Writing papers, blog posts
Gathering use cases and implementation examples
Identifying relevant technology pieces
Publishing linked data!

Deliverables
Side deliverable on use cases
Side deliverable on available data
Main report

Use Cases
Identify business cases and examples implementations
Over 50 cases from XG participants and community
Grouped into 8 topical clusters
Bibliographic data, vocabulary alignment, citations, digital objects, social and new uses…
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/UseCaseReport

Available Data
Document surveying
Datasets
Value vocabularies
Element sets
CKAN LLD group
http://ckan.net/group/lld
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/Vocabulary_and_Dataset

Main report
Intended at a general library audience: decisions-makers, developers, metadata librarians, etc.
Tries to expand on general benefits, issues and recommendations
An entry point into more specific resources
LLD XG side deliverables, many external links

Benefits
General benefits of linked data
Benefits to researchers, students and patrons
Benefits to cultural institutions
Benefits to librarians, archivists and curators
Benefits to developers

Relevant technologies
Linked data front-ends to existing data stores
Web Application Frameworks
Web services for library linked data
Microformats, Microdata and RDFa
Tools for data designers
Etc.

Implementation challenges and barriers to adoption
Designed for stability, the library ecosystem resists (technological) change
ROI is difficult to calculate
Data may have rights issues that prevent (open) publication
Data in library-specific formats is not easily shared outside the library community

Recommendations
Assess
Facilitate
Design and prepare
Curate, identify and link

Still one week for feedback!
Wiki page
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/DraftReportWithTransclusion
Comments can be sent to the public LLD list
[email_address]
Blog for fine-grained comments
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/w3clld/
Or wait till we have finished…

The future?
Discussions and collaboration should continue
Existing groups within libraries or with wider scope
IFLA Semantic Web special interest group
LOD-LAM
A new W3C Community group?

A long-term effort

Libraries are in a unique position for this

Questions?
Links
Official page @ W3C
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/
Wiki site
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/
LLD community mailing list
[email_address]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lld/

Questions?
Some slides adapted from William Waites, http://eris.okfn.org/ww/2011/06/nls/
Pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/3048286070/
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/03903/78FA3F8B4299B45C25C395345D3D16ED24EA7F4F.html
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/03912/E9666896A50FDDE5F7F15A17C11219A7FBCBBC50.html
http://europeana.eu/portal/record/09405o/651D82BEC748FF421B4252C699CC2498EF57E466.html
(Europeana links give access to resources on original sites, with copyright info)

General benefits of linked data
Shareable
Globally unique resolvable identifiers - URI
Libraries can make trusted metadata descriptions for common use
Extensible
"Open world" - no description is complete, anybody can add descriptive information from within their own publishing space
Re-usable
Descriptions from diverse sources talking about the same thing
Annotations, enrichments, etc.
Internationalisable
Full support for translations of terms to other languages
Natural language strings are not used as identifiers
Back

Benefits to researchers, students and patrons
Greater discovery and use capabilities, across library and non-library resources, across disciplines
Information seekers can extract and re-mix the parts of the data they need, add own annotations to library global graph
Semantics in HTML allow resources to be better discovered from websites they use routinely
Library items and data can be fully integrated into research documents and bibliographies
Back

Benefits to cultural institutions
Use of mainstream technologies rather than formats and integrated systems specific to libraries
Sharing data, particularly for items/works and authority data, means less duplication of effort, lower infrastructure costs
Clarification of metadata licensing
Greater visibility on the web and reuse
Back

Benefits to librarians, archivists and curators
Use of web-based identifiers makes resources immediately available and up-to-date
Pull together data from outside their domain environment
across cultural heritage datasets
from the web at large
Concentrate on their domain of local expertise rather than re-creating existing descriptions
Back

Benefits to developers
Use of well known standard protocols and techniques instead of domain-specific software
HTTP instead of Z39.50
RDF instead of MARC or EAD
REST
Freely mix or mash-up data from libraries with other sources
Back

Challenges and barriers
Designed for stability, the library ecosystem resists (technological) change
Tendency to engage only with well-established standards and practices
Standardization processes are long-term, top-down
Bottom-up can be successful but garner little recognition
Tech. expertise lies mostly with a small number of software vendors or in large academic libraries
Libraries are Libraries are understaffed in the technology area

…
Sharing of data traditionally happens amongst libraries, not with the wider world
There is fear that data will need to be "dumbed down" in order to interact with other communities; few see the possibility of "smarting up” data
Cooperative metadata creation is economical but centralised
Back

ROI is difficult to calculate
Cost of current practice is not well known
LD requires tech. staff with specific expertise in library data
Library-specific data formats require niche systems solutions
Back

Data may have rights issues that prevent (open) publication
Some data cannot be opened
Rights have perceived value
Ownership of rights can be unmanageably complex
Back

Data in library-specific formats is not easily shared outside the library community
Data is expressed primarily as text strings, not "linkable" URIs
Self-contained records differ from open-world graphs
Best practices or standardisation for using RDF with library data are needed
The library and LD communities lack shared terminology for metadata concepts
statement, heading, authority control
Back

Recommendations
Assess
Identify candidate datasets for early exposure as linked data
For each dataset, determine ROI of current practices, and costs and ROI of exposing as LD
Evaluate migration strategies
Foster a discussion about open data and rights
Back

Recommendations
Facilitate
Cultivate an ethos of innovation
Small scale R&D within individual library organisations
Identify Linked Data literacy needed for different staff roles in the library
Include metadata design in library and information science education
Increase participation in linked-data standardisation efforts
Back

Recommendations
Design and prepare
Translate library data and standards into linked data
Develop best practices and design patterns for data
Directly use or map to commonly understood LD vocabularies
Design user stories and exemplar UIs
Identify tools supporting the creation and use of LLD
Back

Recommendations
Curate, identify and link
Apply library experience in curation and long-term preservation to linked data (and other) datasets
Ensure preservation of relevant linked data vocabularies
Assign unique identifiers (URIs) for all significant things in library data
Create explicit links between library datasets and to other well-used datasets
Back

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W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group - 2011

by Antoine Isaac

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