The LOCAH project aims to expose linked data from archival descriptions and library catalogs in the UK by transforming data into RDF format and facilitating its accessibility through various linked data views. It involves collaboration among multiple organizations and focuses on addressing data modeling challenges, including inconsistencies and lack of standardization. The project also includes developing a prototype visualization to enhance user experience and reporting on opportunities and barriers encountered during the process.

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

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

5. 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.

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

7. 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

8. 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/

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 1. Modelling ‘things’ into RDF 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

13. 1. Modelling ‘things’ into RDF 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

14. 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

15. 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

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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

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

23. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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

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

30. 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/