Report to SemTech2011 on the Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museum Summit.

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!