Online Information Conference
by Tom Scott on Dec 02, 2009
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That’s not because I don’t think it’s important, I do, but rather because RDF is often conflated with RDF/XML and I would rather consider the model for a bit - what it means and how we’ve used it. So I guess what I really mean is that what I’m going to be talking about is RDF the model not RDF the data format. If however that is something you are interested in that perhaps grab me after my talk because we are publishing lots and lots of RDF/XML.
Its mission is to enrich people's lives with programmes that inform, educate and entertain. It is a public service broadcaster, established by a Royal Charter and funded by the licence fee that is paid by UK households.
The BBC uses the income from the licence fee to provide services, including...
8 national TV channels + regional variations and programming
National TV and radio for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland plus 40 local radio stations
We’ve had a web presence since 1994
What all this means is that the BBC produces an incredible range, diversity and volume of content .
This volume of content is a challenge in it’s own right let alone before you consider the size of the existing archive
As a result the BBC has historically created a series of microsite. Each coherent in their own right but not across the breadth of BBC content.
Consider for example I can navigate around a Radio 4 site about the opening of the LHC... but...
Starting with the data and how people think about it rather than starting with the web page down. And when I say data I really mean starting with understanding what things people care about and giving each of those things a URI and returning appropriate representations...
But the idea that we should care about our URIs, care about having one per concept, care about having machine representations for those resources instead of a separate API has helped us build a coherent, scalable, sane service.
Linking Open Data is a grassroots project to use web technologies to expose data on the web. It is for many people synonymous with the semantic web, or worse web 3.0, a term I personally can’t stand (esp when you consider that TimBLs original memo described a web of things).
It does, as far as I’m concerned, represent a very large subset of the semantic web project.
But what is it?
Well it can be described with 4 simple rules.
Those documents make assertions about things in the real world but that doesn’t mean the identifiers can only be used to identify web documents.
Minting URIs for things rather than pages helps make the web more human literate because it means we are identifying those things that people care about.
URI’s are globally unique, open to all and decentralised.
Don’t go using DOI or any other identifier - on the web all you need is an HTTP URI.
Providing the data as RDF means that machines can process that information for people to use. Making it more useful.
And that means contextual links to other resources elsewhere on the web, not just your site.
And that’s it. Pretty simple.
And I would argue that, other than the RDF bit, these principles should be followed for any website - they just make sense.
Was born here
That my name is this
(diff slide - my driving license is another identifier which also makes assertions about me)
Was born here
That my name is this
(diff slide - my driving license is another identifier which also makes assertions about me)
Was born here
That my name is this
(diff slide - my driving license is another identifier which also makes assertions about me)
Was born here
That my name is this
(diff slide - my driving license is another identifier which also makes assertions about me)
Sound like this
Do these things
This has happened to them
They live here
Do have this sort of way of life (adaptations)
Sound like this
Do these things
This has happened to them
They live here
Do have this sort of way of life (adaptations)
Sound like this
Do these things
This has happened to them
They live here
Do have this sort of way of life (adaptations)
Sound like this
Do these things
This has happened to them
They live here
Do have this sort of way of life (adaptations)
Again the information about the artist ‘lives’ at /music but it’s pulled into the programme domain because
So we have classes of object and relationships between them, and resources within each class. For example - a Lion is a Species and species have defined relationships to habitats, location, conservation status and adaptation.
What this means is that when we create a new species it appears on it’s habitat, adaptation page etc.