The LUCERO project aims to link and expose university data from the Open University using linked data technologies to make the data more accessible and connectable for students and researchers. The initial work involved exposing two datasets, ORO and podcasts, as linked data and establishing the data.open.ac.uk prototype site. Future plans include linking additional institutional datasets like course descriptions, library catalogues, and research datasets to create a more interconnected web of Open University data.

1. Linking University Content for
Education and Research Online
http://lucero-project.info
Owen Stephens
03/11/2010

2. “investigate and
prototype the use of linked
data technologies and
approaches to linking and
exposing data for students
and researchers”
2

3. h$p://www.flickr.com/photos/69736632@N00/2246308205/ 3

4. Linked Data
• URI
– Uniform Resource Identifier
– “a simple and extensible means for identifying a
resource”
– A URL is a type of URI
• RDF
– Resource Description Framework
– Uses URIs or Literals
• Ontology
– ‘a shared vocabulary, which can be used to model a
domain’
4

6. Title

7. Title
Author

8. Publisher
Title
Genre
Author
Price

9. Jane Eyre
has a
creator
whose name is
Charlotte Bronte

10. Jane Eyre Subject
has a
creator
whose name is
Charlotte Bronte

11. Jane Eyre Subject
has a
creator Predicate
whose name is
Charlotte Bronte

12. Jane Eyre Subject
has a
creator Predicate
whose name is
Charlotte Bronte
Object

13. Jane Eyre
has a
creator
whose name is
Charlotte Bronte

14. Jane Eyre Subject
has a
creator
whose name is
Charlotte Bronte

15. Jane Eyre
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1260/1260-h/
Subject
1260-h.htm
has a
creator
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator Predicate
whose name is
Charlotte Bronte

17. ORO
Archive of
Library’s
Course
Catalogue
Material
Of Digital
Content

18. Data from
OpenLearn
ORO Research
Content
Outputs
Archive of
Library’s
Course
Catalogue
Material
Of Digital
Content
A/V Material
Podcasts
iTunesU

19. Data from
OpenLearn
ORO Research
Content
Outputs
Archive of
Library’s
Course
Catalogue
Material
Of Digital
Content
A/V Material
Podcasts
iTunesU

20. Data from
OpenLearn
ORO Research
Content
Outputs
Archive of
Library’s
Course
Catalogue
Material
Of Digital
Content
A/V Material
Podcasts
iTunesU

21. Data from
OpenLearn
ORO Research
Content
Outputs
Archive of
Library’s
Course
Catalogue
Material
Of Digital
Content
A/V Material
Podcasts
iTunesU

22. DBPedia RAE
Data from
OpenLearn
ORO Research
Content
Outputs
Archive of
Library’s
Course
Catalogue
geonames Material
Of Digital
Content
data.gov.uk
A/V Material
Podcasts
iTunesU
BBC
DBLP

23. Salman Elahi Carlo Allocca
((Ex)‐Dev) (Dev)
Jane Whild Fouad Zablith
(Admin) (Dev)
Andriy Nikolov KMi
Enrico Mo$a
(linking) Mathieu d’Aquin
(SGP)
(PD)
Arts
Suzanne Duncanson‐Hunter
John Wolffe
Paul Lawrence
Richard Nurse Owen Stephens
((ex‐)PM) Stuart Brown
(PM)
Com./
Student
Comp.
Non Scantlebury Data Owners
Library Services Arts Specialists
Specialists OU Library

24. The LUCERO Stack
Applicaeons
Organizaeonal
Research Data
Insetueonal repository data
Technical

25. Workflow for a given dataset
Lucero Core ‐ Idenefy data
Inieal Meeeng ‐ Get sample data
Team
with Data ‐ Idenefy Copyright Issues
Data Owner Owner ‐ Idenefy possible links
‐ Idenefy users and usage
Lucero KMi ‐ Find reusable ontologies Lucero Core
Team ‐ Map onto the data
Data Modeling Data Modeling Team
sessions ‐ Idenefy uncovered parts Validaeon
Lucero
members ‐ Define URI Scheme Data Owner
URI Creaeon
Lucero KMi Development
Rules Deployment
Team of Extractor
Definieon

26. First Version of
data.open.ac.uk
with 2 datasets:
ORO and Podcasts
“data.open.ac.uk is
the first site of its
kind and is to
become the
prototype for many
other data.*.ac.uk”

27. Dataset: ORO
• Open Research Online
• Scientific publications with at least one
member of the Open University as co-author
• Original System based on ePrints
• Export to RDF using the BiBO Ontology
• Post-processing/cleaning
• 13,283 Articles/12 Patents/340,000 triples

29. Dataset: Podcast
• Extracted from RSS feeds at http://
podcast.open.ac.uk
• Using W3C Media Ontology, FOAF, DCT,
Media RDF, etc.
• Provides connections to courses and
topics
• 1,664 Video Podcasts/1,325 Audio
Podcasts/75,000 triples

31. Institutional Datasets
• Study at the OU
– Course.Module/Qualification descriptions
– Links internal: podcast, books, people, faculties, …
– Links external: geonames, topics, others?
• Library catalogue
– Publications, books, course material, to be clarified
– Links internal: Video content, staff profiles, ORO…
– Links external: BBC, DBPedia, other online libs,
data.gov.uk…

32. Institutional Datasets
• Staff profile
– Information about people, people decide what is public
– Links internal: ORO, lib, Video, research data…
– Links external: other people info online (FOAF)…
• OpenLearn
– Educational material, Open
– Links internal: possibly everything
– Links external: DBPedia, many others…
• Estate Information
– About building, spaces, campus and regional centers
– Links internal: Units, people, …
– Links external: location…

33. Research datasets
• Looking at how specific research databases Web of data
can benefit from being linked to the
institutional repositories
• Case studies in Arts:
– Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in
English
– Open Arts Archive
OU linked
– Encyclopedia of Global Commodities
data cloud
– Hestia
– Red Experience Database
– The South-Asians Making Britain project
• Initial discussions with all the projects and
agreement on the next step
Research
• Next step: data access and modelling Data

34. Dissemination
• Twitter
– #luceroproject (and sometimes
#projectlucero ;-) )
– Many RTs on project related tweets,
especially on data.open.ac.uk
• “Collecting material related to courses at
The Open University”
– Use case for W3C Library Linked data incubator
group
– http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/

35. Dissemination
• http://lucero-project.info
• http://data.open.ac.uk

36. Applications
• Plan for development of specific
applications targeting:
– Students: in finding resources related to
courses, topics, and helping selecting courses
to enroll to
– Researchers: Identify interesting connections/
research questions from research data linked to
OU/external sources
• Already a number of (more generic)
applications emerging…

37. Dissemination
• Seminar in KMi Podium 11:30 on
03/11/2010
– http://stadium.open.ac.uk/1570
• Plan for a press release on data.open.ac.uk
– As soon as course description is available