The document discusses the growing Linked Open Data (LOD) movement in libraries, archives, and museums (LODLAM). It notes that LODLAM allows these institutions to explore data interoperability both within the cultural sector and more broadly on the web. The document outlines several outcomes of a LODLAM summit, including outreach, education, developing use cases, and examining issues around copyright and licensing of open data. Examples are provided of institutions that have published bibliographic and other cultural data using open licenses.

1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pict_u_re/2372235999
The State of Linked Open Data in Libraries,
Archives & Museums
SemTech 2011
June 8, 2011
Jon Voss
Strategic Partnerships Director, Historypin
@jonvoss
jon.voss@wearewhatwedo.org
#lodlam
v1.1_2011-05-26

2. About LODLAM
• #lodlam teaser: http://youtu.be/YdrVI7emnt4
• Using WWW standards to explore data interoperability not only between
institutions but with the Web community and end users as well.
• The last few years have seen a major cultural shift on the whole, but in
institutions, addressing changing expectations from audiences,
curators, & technologists
• This amounts to an enormous opportunity for libraries, archives, &
museums, and for the semantic web community as well.

3. LODLAM is a Growing Movement
• in its infancy, but picking up steam
• it requires experimentation
• small, niche, domain-specific implementations
• use cases, reasons for content providers to get excited about contributing

4. Cross Pollination & Translation
• More opportunities than ever to cross borders of academics,
programmers, museum professionals, archivists, librarians, technologists,
etc.
• www.thatcamp.org #thatcamp
• Many similar concepts between Library & Information Sciences types and
Linked Data/Semantic Web developers
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orpost/3674429337/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ghwpix/3665232629/

5. LODLAM is a product of our increasingly
connected culture.
• it’s an unfolding story, but it’s awn...
• first funded projects in the US exploring Linked Open Data in the
humanities now underway: http://lod-lam.net
• 100 people gathered from around the world June 2-3 to forward
LODLAM in the next year, thanks to generous funding from:

6. LOD-LAM Summit: over 85 organizations
• First of it’s kind meeting
• Bridging sciences and humanities to focus on moving Linked Open Data
forward in public & academic libraries, archives & museums world wide in
the next year.
• Libraries like: Library of Congress, French & German National libraries,
NYPL, Open Library, state libraries across the country
• Archives like: the National Archives of US and UK, California Digital Library
• Museums like: The Met, SFMOMA, Powerhouse, Smithsonian

7. LODLAM Summit Outcomes
• Outreach, Education, Evangelization
• Making sense of copyright, licensing, publishing options, setting precedent
• Developing collaborative use cases

8. Examples of working within LODLAM

9. Expose yourself, be vulnerable
• This is the major cultural shift, the tide rising amongst institutions, that data
wants to be free in a culture economy.
• There is value in sharing
• It does require a leap of faith, but risks and rewards should be carefully
considered and calculated
• Excellent resource: JISC Open Bibliographic Data Guide http://
obd.jisc.ac.uk/

10. Open Data
• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
• http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/
Open Data Published Data
CC-BY CC-BY-NC-ND
CC0
CC-BY-NC
Public Domain Mark
CC-BY-ND
Public Domain Dedication and License
(PDDL)
CC-BY-SA
Attribution License (ODC-By)
Open Database License (ODC-ODbL) CC-BY-NC-SA

11. Metadata vs. data, assets, digital surrogates
• A key conceptual shift with Open Data is looking at metadata and data as
two separate things, that can have different licensing and permissions

12. Examples and precedents
• Bibliographic data:
• British Library (CC0), University of Michigan (CC0), Stanford (CC-BY)
have published large, raw datasets of bibliographic data they have
created (being careful not to publish OCLC or other vendor controlled or
licensed metadata)

13. Examples and precedents
• Civil War Data 150
• Metadata from contributing federal institutions are largely considered
to be Public Domain.
• State, local, university & individual researchers are considering
policies for metadata publishing on a case by case basis.

14. Civil War Data 150 - Linked Data in Scholarship
• consider graph demo: http://civilwardata150.net
• Starts with open data sets from multiple institutions
• Civil War vocabulary, or a way to link and traverse across datasets
• Regiments, battles, Freebase military schema

15. Civil War Data 150 - Linked Data in Scholarship
• Building apps
• How tools like Simile/Exhibit can use Linked Data in coordination with
Freebase (Conflict History: http://conflicthistory.com/#/period/
1861-1865/conflict/+en+american_civil_war)
• Now there’s a reason to publish RDF, etc.

16. What will happen to your data?
• If you want people to do something with your data/metadata, you have to
put it out there
• But once you do, it’s [mostly] out of your control. Yet it can be a part of
something much greater than any of the component parts
• Roots and Wings

17. What will happen to your data?
• working with Open Data from
NOAA at wherecamp 2011. http://
www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/
history/CivilWar/

18. Sciences leading the way vs. Humanities
• In the sciences, there have been a lot of advances in the realm of Open
Data, which will provide models for humanities research as well
• Nano Publishing: the idea of publishing datasets separately from
research findings, so that it can more easily be built upon and integrated
into other datasets. Several scientific journals have already started this.
• Federally funded medical research must have a data management plan
and some funders are requiring that data be published separately from
analysis and findings as Open Data

19. Join the LODLAM movement
• http://groups.google.com/group/
lod-lam
• #lodlam hashtag on Twitter
• http://lod-lam.net proceedings
online and on the road for the next
year at various annual meetings
and conferences
• Contribute!