Linked Data : Cataloguing and a World Wide Web of Data
1. Linked data :
cataloguing and a world wide web of data
UCL Library Services Staff Conference 2014
11 July 2014
Thomas Meehan
t.meehan@ucl.ac.uk
2. 1. Use URIs as names for things
2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those
names.
3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful
information, using the standards (RDF, SPARQL)
4. Include links to other URIs so that they can
discover more things.
Tim Berners-Lee (2006)
Linked Open Data
12. Linked Data in the Wild
BBC major events (e.g. World Cup)
Dbpedia
GeoNames
Ordnance Survey
Europeana
13. Common Linked Data Vocabularies
RDFS (RDF Schema) – basic data modelling
OWL (Web Ontology Language) – ontologies
SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) - thesauri
Dublin Core – cultural things
FOAF (Friend of a Friend) – people
GeoNames - places
GoodRelations – commercial things
Schema.org – anything, often embedded in web pages
18. British Library model (used for the BNB)
<http://bnb.data.bl.uk/doc/resource/015771460> dct:creator <http://bnb.data.bl.uk/id/person/WaughEvelyn1903-1966> .
19. British Library model (used for the BNB)
<http://bnb.data.bl.uk/id/person/WaughEvelyn1903-1966> rdfs:label "Waugh, Evelyn, 1903-1966" ;
owl:sameAs <http://viaf.org/viaf/68937142> .
20. Library Linked Data in the Wild
Bibliothèque national de France
British National Bibliography
Cambridge University
European Library (includes RLUK data!)
Oslo Public Library
Swedish National Library
21. Library Linked Data Vocabularies
Dublin Core (again)
BIBO
RDA
BNB Data Model
Europeana Data Model
Schema.org (including Bib Extend)
BIBFRAME
30. References
Bartlett, Oliver. Linked Data: Connecting together the BBC's Online Content. 2013.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Linked-Data-Connecting-together-the-BBCs-Online-Content
Berners-Lee, Tim., Linked Data: Design Issues. W3C, 2006.
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html
Bibliothèque national de France. Semantic Web and Data Model.
http://data.bnf.fr/semanticweb
British Library. Free Data Services. Linked Open BNB.
http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html#lod
Dbpedia.
http://dbpedia.org/About
DCMI. DCMI Terms. 2014.
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/
The European Library. About The European Library datasets.
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/access
Europeana. Linked Data.
http://pro.europeana.eu/linked-open-data
FOAF Project. FOAF Documentations.
http://www.foaf-project.org/docs
GeoNames.
http://www.geonames.org/about.html
GeoNames Ontology.
http://www.geonames.org/ontology/documentation.html
Hepp, Martin. GoodRelations: the Professional Web Vocabulary for E-Commerce.
http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/
Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC). RDA Registry.
http://www.rdaregistry.info/
Kungliga biblioteket. LIBRIS-enheten. LIBRIS Available as Linked Data. 2008.
http://librisbloggen.kb.se/2008/12/03/libris-available-as-linked-data/
Library of Congress. BIBFRAME: Bibliographic Framework Initiative.
http://www.loc.gov/bibframe/
Library of Congress. LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies.
http://id.loc.gov/
Meehan, Thomas. Bookmarklet for searching catalogues from Wikipedia.
http://www.aurochs.org/aurlog/2013/03/25/bookmarklet-for-searching-catalogues-from-wikipedia/
31. OCLC. VIAF (Virtual Online Authority File).
http://viaf.org/
OCLC. Worldcat.
https://www.worldcat.org/
Ordnance Survey. Ordnance Survey Linked Data Platform.
http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/
Rekkavik, Asgeir. RDF Linked data cataloguing at Oslo Public Library. 2014.
http://digital.deichman.no/blog/2014/07/06/rdf-linked-data-cataloguing-at-oslo-public-
library/
Schema.org. Schema.org.
https://schema.org/
Structured Dynamics. Bibliographic Ontology Specification. 2009.
http://bibliontology.com/
University of Cambridge. data.lib.cam.ac.uk.
http://data.lib.cam.ac.uk
University of Southampton. University of Southampton Linked Open Data Map.
http://opendatamap.ecs.soton.ac.uk/#
W3C. OWL 2 Web Ontology Language
Document Overview . 2nd Edition. 2012.
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/
W3C. RDF Schema 1.1.
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/
W3C. RDF Working Group. RDF: Semantic Web Standards..
http://www.w3.org/RDF/
W3C. SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System.
http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/
32. Linked data :
cataloguing and a world wide web of data
UCL Library Services Staff Conference 2014
11 July 2014
Thomas Meehan
t.meehan@ucl.ac.uk
Editor's Notes
I intend to look at
what linked data is
What it looks like
In particular, how it might affect cataloguing
NB. It is not a cataloguing standard. It is not even a library standard.
A URL is basically an address. A URI is an identifier. There are lots of different sorts (URNs, ftp, etc.).
A http URI is one kind, and the basis of the web. WEB OF DATA (not to be confused with the Web of Things, e.g. fridges)
Whereas people can benefit from HTML and well writtten content, computers need structure, and this structure is provided by RDF.
Links made the web of documents more powerful and do the same for the web of data.
Concentrate on RDF
An English sentence
Two entities and a relationship
This is a basic triple (spread over three lines), the basis of all RDF, no matter how complex it gets.
Note that this triple stands on its own. There is no need for it to be part of MARC as the equivalent MARC does!
There are many ways to write triples out depending on who or what needs to write or read them. Most computers can read them all. Turtle is one of the easier ones for humans to read.
Almost always these are mixed together.
Schema.org is a simple but powerful one designed for adding to web pages. Moves away from search engines having to index text and document formatting towards them understanding what a web page is all about.
A Worldcat page
The bottom of a web page shows the schema.org tags embedded within it.
This is what a small sample of the the underlying RDF looks like.
Note the formal statements made at the top.
Links to external resources. Means we can follow these links and find more information.
More assertions are made using the VIAF URI, in this case giving the actual name as a string.
For comparison this is the British Library data model.
Reused existing vocabularies!
Again, re-used existing vocabularies, except where there was nothing to fit.
Again, links to external resources as well as giving the text of the person&apos;s name.
A selection of prominent libraries that have published catalogue data as linked data.
All different ways of doing things. Of note in particular is that the Oslo Public Library is using linked data, not merely converting. The European Library data includes all the RLUK data found on COPAC! Their model includes a number of elements from the RDA registry.
The Oslo and Swedish examples are notable in that linked data are used in their processes, i.e. not just as a big conversion.
Where does cataloguing fit into all this?
When US national and major university libraries starting testing RDA, they found that MARC21 really couldn&apos;t handle it so made progress towards a replacement one of their less humiliating conditions to implementing RDA.
The Library of Congress implemented the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME). Aided by consultants Zepheira and some early experimenters (including the BL although no longer).
BIBFRAME has its own model
Bears some similarity to the FRBR model.
This is a theoretical example, imagining that we have a linked data server set up.
Notice how all the properties are BIBFRAME-specific. BIBFRAME is very like this, unusually so, arguably for reasons of security and control. Schema.org also is but is much less ambitious or complicated.
None of this is supported by library systems, and that is part of the point! MARC locks us into library-specific specialised software. Using linked data frees us, at least in theory. There is the danger with BIBFRAME being such an &apos;official&apos; standard that this is what everyone will follow. Not necessarily a good thing.
TOY 1: An editor. Bibframe have produced this as a means of getting Bibframe into systems to be played with without having to convert from MARC records. A good toy!
TOY 2. A simple use of linked data to navigate between different, utterly separate sources of data, via a third.