How to Leverage Linked (Open) Data to enhance and better define your internal data sets.

1. Linked Data In Action
Using Linked Data to improve your information
KM World / Taxonomy Boot Camp 2017
Jim Sweeney, Senior Product Manager
Taxonomy and Ontology Solutions

2. Linked Data and the
Semantic Web
• In 1991 Tim Berners-Lee described what
he called the World Wide Web, which
was meant to, “allow links to be made to
any information anywhere.”1
• In the 2010’s we are seeing this concept
realized in Linked Data, utilizing RDF
standards and other technologies such as
SPARQL (Protocol and RDF Query
Language) and JSON (JavaScript Object
Notation).
• With Linked Data protocols, one may
send queries across the web to retrieve
specific information from any source
published in this format.
Linking Open Data cloud diagram 2017, by Andrejs Abele, John P. McCrae, Paul Buitelaar,
Anja Jentzsch and Richard Cyganiak. http://lod-cloud.net/
1 https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1991/08/art-6484.txt

3. A Few Linked Open Data Sources
DBPedia (WikiPedia)
Getty Arts & Architecture
Thesaurus (AAT)
GeoData (Locations)

4. 1,163 Linked
Open Data
Sources at Last
Count
Linking Open Data cloud diagram 2017, by Andrejs Abele, John
P. McCrae, Paul Buitelaar, Anja Jentzsch and Richard Cyganiak.
http://lod-cloud.net/

5. Linked Open Data Accessibility
• There must be resolvable http:// (or https://) URIs.
• They must resolve, with or without content negotiation,
to RDF data in one of the popular RDF formats (RDFa,
RDF/XML, Turtle, N-Triples).
• The dataset must contain at least 1000 triples.
• The dataset must be connected via RDF links to a dataset
that is already in the diagram. This means, either your
dataset must use URIs from the other dataset, or vice
versa. We arbitrarily require at least 50 links.
• Access of the entire dataset must be possible via RDF
crawling, via an RDF dump, or via a SPARQL endpoint.

6. RDF and Triples
• RDF or Resource Description Framework
provides standards that we use to uniformly
describe the relationships between nodes, as
well as describe other attributes that we
want to assign to our data as metadata.
• The standard establishes a subject-predicate-
object unit called a triple.
• One such RDF standard, FOAF (Friend of a
Friend), is a collection of relationships and
attributes describing people, their
relationships to one another, and their
activities.
• In this example, we see “Alice” is identified as
a member of a family, organizations, based
near a location, and with a descriptive home
page.

7. What Linked Data Allows
• The structure of Linked
Data allows us to link to
external sources to
append to and enhance
the information that we
are storing and managing
locally.
• By selecting Sources and
the Properties of those
Sources we can pick and
choose which elements
are relevant to our own
data and link to them.

8. Joining Linked Data to Your Information
• One is able to perform a
search of the specified
Source, which returns the
previously selected
Properties.
• A Relationship is chosen
and those Properties that
you wish to link to your
internally managed listings
and they will now appear
as a Linked Data attribute
for use with external
applications.

9. The Benefits of Linked Data Usage
• Leverage the work of external experts rather than
hiring for in-house development.
• Take advantage of a much deeper set of knowledge
than you would normally have access to.
• Access multiple sources and, therefore, multiple
points of view for a broader scope of context.
• Use Linked Data to publish your own information
and make it available via the WWW.
• Enhance Search and Knowledge Retrieval…

10. Generic search suggests results by
querying Linked Data sources
such as DBPedia.
Relevant results returned via taxonomy
term “roll-up” to related and broader
terminology.
Associated articles and other
information may also be
produced.

11. The Age of Linked Data
• Linked Data begins to usher in a new age
of the World Wide Web. (Web 3.0 / the
Semantic Web)
• It provides a new world of resources for
the Knowledge Worker
• The hope is that someday more
information than not will be publicly
available via Linked Data for access by
any user of the web.
The Semantic Web is not
a separate Web but an
extension of the current
one, in which information
is given well-defined
meaning, better enabling
computers and people to
work in cooperation.
-Tim Berners-Lee
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/tim_bernerslee

12. Jim Sweeney
Sr. Prod. Mgr., Taxonomy and Ontology Solutions
jim.sweeney@synaptica.com
www.synaptica.com