Deus Ex Machina: is linked data the answer?
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Presentation given by Gill Hamilton, National Library of Scotland at the OCLC seminar "Is there are library shaped black hole in the web?" on 16 October 2015 at Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. Gill's presentation explains the experiments undertake at the Library into linked open data. She suggests several practical tips to help libraries prepare for linked open data including; recording URIs, not dumbing down your metadata, concentrating on your unique collections, openly licensing your metadata, using open vocabularies and demanding better systems to manage linked data components and requirements.
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Deus Ex Machina: is linked data the answer?
- 1. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba deus ex machina is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 is linked data the answer? Gill Hamilton Digital Access Manager
- 2. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba • about the Library and me • our modest experiments • Top Tips for preparing for LOD • is linked data the answer? is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 I’ll be looking at ….
- 3. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 National Library of Scotland by Ross G Strachan
- 4. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 All images CC-BY National Library of Scotland
- 5. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 All images CC-BY National Library of Scotland The Way Forward PDF
- 6. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Image CC-BY Gill Hamilton
- 7. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba • if I learned one thing it is … • dabbling in the DOD • The 3Rs our experiments is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015
- 8. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 LOD? Oh yeah I geddit! Errr… no I don’t geddit Ah that’s right … Errr… Images CC-BY Gill Hamilton
- 9. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 What the hell is? SKOS RDF triple Store URI SPARQL OWL TURTLE XSLT Images CC=BY Gill Hamilton and God divides heaven … Public Domain
- 10. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 oh no! Oh No! OH NO! HELP! Images CC-BY Gill Hamilton and God divides heaven … Public Domain
- 11. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Och! Dinnae fash yersel! Images CC-BY Gill Hamilton and God divides heaven … Public Domain
- 12. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 you and I know it already … we call it interoperability ye olden days BM rules AACR MARC collaboration RDA LOD C L 0 S E D O P E N Open vocs
- 13. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba dabbling in the DOD is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 http://www.math.uh.edu/~tomforde/images/UniverseAndMan.jpgAll images CC-BY National Library of Scotland
- 14. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 stop ... start ... stop ... start ... stop ... • went to school to learn RDF • tried mapping our data to DC Terms • tried to discover URIs • created RDF for a single resource • published the DOD element set
- 15. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 All images CC-BY National Library of Scotland
- 16. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba RDA (and FRBR) [link] RIMMF [link] RDF The 3Rs is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015
- 17. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Images CC-BY Gill Hamilton
- 18. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 1. strings and things 2. be smart, not dumb 3. uniqueness ….. and some more
- 19. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Top Tip 1 we have strings “Hamilton, Gill” but we need things too we need URIs THE BIG ISSUE
- 20. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 machines are really stupid Main catalogue Archive catalogue Moving image catalogue Hamilton, Gill W. Hamilton, Gillian W. Hamilton, G. W. you are really really smart
- 21. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 machines are really stupid you are really really smart Wikicommons–©AristaRecords Wikicommons–Publicdomain Wikicommons–CC-BY-SATrollderella
- 22. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 record just 1 more thing the URI c’est tout! stop digging
- 23. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 and … you might be lucky Fingers Crossed by ~dgies CC-BY-NC-ND
- 24. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Get others to help We think this cathedral’s in Cambrai Or do you think Cambrai is here? Do you think Cambrai is here?
- 25. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Top Tip 2
- 26. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Frankly my dear! I don’t give a damn about your domain Never, EVER dumb your data WikiCommons - © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- 27. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba DOD data structure DOD.title DOD.keyword DOD.who local & closed global & open X S L T LOD in DC is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 DC:title DC:subject DC:creator
- 28. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Image CC-BY Gill Hamilton
- 29. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba DOD data local & closed global & open DOD in LOD structure DOD.title DOD.keyword DOD.who M A P P I N G DC RDA SCHEMA is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015
- 30. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba National Library of Scotland’s DOD RDF element set at Open Metadata Registry is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015
- 31. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Top Tip 3
- 32. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 concentrate on the unique Order to Capt. Campbell by Maj. Duncanson You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebells, the McDonalds of Glencoe, and put all to the sword under seventy.
- 33. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 uniqueness is about making the BEST use of limited resources making the BEST contribution making BEST metadata for LOD
- 34. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 1. record URIs 2. don’t dumb the data 3. work on unique stuff ….. and some more
- 35. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 the other tips
- 36. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 ZERO CC openly licence your metadata
- 37. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 LCNAF LCSH TGMI AAT TGN DDC … soon? http://id.loc.gov/ http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/ use open vocabularies Library of Congress by The Agency CC-BY-SA OCLC Building by Matkatamiba CC-BY-SA Getty Institute by Pbjamesphoto CC-BY-SA
- 38. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 DEMAND better systems Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flag - Public domain
- 39. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 So is linked data the answer?
- 40. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015 Well maybe … it’s risky! not convincing but it’s worth the risk
- 41. National Library of Scotland Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba Gill Hamilton Digital Access Manager g.hamilton@nls.uk NationalLibraryofScotland @natlibscot thank you is there a library shaped hole in the web? 16 October 2015
Editor's Notes
- National Library of Scotland is Scotland’s Legal Deposit Library. It’s main building on George IV Bridge, Edinburgh houses our General and Special collections reading room, exhibitions and café/ Our Causewayside Building in Edinburgh houses the map reading room. There are 2 other administration buildings in Edinburgh. The Library’s Moving Image Archive is in Hillington. In late 2016 the Library will open it’s first public premises in Glasgow at Kelvin Hall. The centre will make available the moving image and digital collections.
- National Library of Scotland’s collections are vast and varied. 2 million maps, 7 million manuscripts, more than 4 million books, more than 30,000 films and videos. Our fastest growing collections are our digital collections which are already run to about 9 million items, most of this is legal deposit however a growing number is digitisation. We have available 12,000 digitised books or other resources with several thousand in processing.
- Dr John Scally, National Librarian launched the Library’sambitious new strategy in September 2015. It has 6 priorities including guardianship of the collection, promoting research and developing the physical library but most important and excitingly for me are is the priority that commits the Library to describing all its collections in the next 10 years and giving digital access to a third of its collection. A great challenge for us and will deliver a radically different kind of National Library of Scotland.
- And me… I’m the digital access manager. I oversee the access to the digital collections, lead on resource discovery and library management systems. As part of the new strategy I just moved to a new team and will be working hard with my colleagues to develop the systems and processes that will allow us to deliver the strategy. It’s exciting times! I am by no means an expert in linked data. I guess I’m an expert in metadata (but not from the cataloguing point of view) more from processing point of view. Oh and in my spare time I shout at the TV when Scotland play rugby and do things like cycle across America.
- Our experiments with linked data – just a little bit of back ground about what we’ve been doing. I should stress this is only experiments, we have nothing in production.
- So when I started looking into LOD I would understand it, get a sense of it and then lose it. Then understand it again and lose it again. It seems this getting it and not getting it is quite common.
- And then the jargon. The technologies. It all looks so scary and freaked me out.
- OH NO!
- But actually what I learned is that it’s actually very familiar and you don’t need to overly fret about LOD. Just think about it another way ….
- If I learned one thing about experimenting is that it isn’t new, and is actually very familiar to us as librarian When you strip away the bamboozling chitter chatter, the technology and the threats of the end of the Library then you see that it’s a continuum ofinteroperability but this time we move from the local library domain to a true global domain. LOD lets you move out of the traditional library sphere and reach from local to global In the beginning libraries were complete closed. Monks looked after them, books were chained to the wall. Then we see developments like the BM Cataloguing rules and libraries start to describe things more consistently Then AACR and the english speaking world describing things in the same way Then MARC which that allows libraries to exchange data efficiently with each other for the 1st time MARC leads to an era of Collaboration between libraries allowing things such as national libraries like NLS to participate in national shared cataloguing programmes and development of global authority files like LCSH and LCNAF. Then we see vocabularies being published openly with RDF representions (RDF representation means it’s LOD-Ready). Vocabularies such as The Getty Institutes Thesaurus for Geographic Names and Library of Congress Name authority file And now we have the new content description standard RDA (Resource Description and Access) which has an RDF representation And we have linked open data which allows us to continue to interoperate but in a new and wider way. It lets us reach out to the global graph. Take us beyond the library and bibliographic domain. The continuum of interoperability has moved us from a closed environment to an open environment, enabling us to focus on the local and participate and link to the global
- DOD = digital object database. National Library of Scotland developed database that manages our digitised content. Has more than 15 million records in the database and it represents digitised books maps, broadsides, photos, posters, manuscripts. It’s a nice place to start to learn LOD coz it’s home grown and very familiar, has a very well considered structure and the resources are consistently well described using AACR and a range of standard and open vocabularies such as TGN, AAT, TGMI, LCSH and LCNAF. It is also very easy to export nicely structured XML from the database coz is SQL Server
- We output in XML a very small section of data of the photos of the construction of the Forth Bridge and worked at transforming the XML in to RDF. So we took a W3C schools course to learn RDF We mapped our data to the RDF representation of Dublin Core We tried to discover URIs for the vocabularies that we used using a tool called Google Refine We made RDF for a single resource And we openly published the DOD element set in an open registry.
- And here’s an RDF graph of one the Forth Bridge construction records.
- Over the summer we’ve done some experimenting and research into RDA and RDF. We were interested in learning more about RDA, not the faux RDA we use in MARC which just seems to be a couple of new fields about content and carrier but real pure RDA. Cataloguing from scratch in RDA, learning all about the benefits of FRBR. To do this we used RIMMF which is a training tool that lets you work in pure RDA and interact with common vocabularies like LCNAF and then output RDF (and if you must MARC). From RIMMF you can output RDA WEMI in RDF. I’ll tell you a secret, you can also output it as MARC! .RDA has an RDF representation which basically means its linked data. The RDA elements are registered as URIs in the Open Metadata Registry, which means anyone and anything (machines) can view and use them and see the semantics.
- Some screenshots of the work we did with RDA and RIMMF
- So from our experiments I have 3 tips for you to consider if you want to prepare yourself for linked data
- From all our experiments the biggest issue is this The data we have in the Library and that you all probably have is that we record “strings”. Human readable strings It’s a piece of text. Linked data is about linking things together or URIs so machines can process them. So we need to gather the URIs Now you might think that a machine could do the matching of strings for you but machines are really really stoopid
- So consider this – this is a real example from the library. We have 3 several databases and people are sometimes described differently in each database. Let’s say we want to find the URI in LCNAF for me. (well actually I’m not in LCNAF) Do you think this is the same person? Probably! And if not you’d get on the phone and ask. Then you’d find out that I’m mortified by my middle name Wendy But machines can’t do that. Machines don’t know that these are the same people. You’d have to program a lot of regular expression work and checking other data and still you couldn’t be confident that a machine would get it right. So machines can’t be trusted to go off and look for URIs. You’ll get multiple hits and false drops.
- Here’s another one ….. Horses. You’ve described horses in your database and you want a machine to try and find URIs for that? Not a chance! It’s hard for machines It’s about language It’s about ambiguity It’s simple for humans, machines have no intelligence
- So my tip is …... In your database stop recording only the string When you record Gill Hamilton record the URI too – When you write the word “horse” into your database record it’s URI too from LCSH
- And look in your authority file and see “pseudo URIs” like the LCSH and LCNAF id numbers – these are infact, usually the URI. You can’t always be sure of this tho, especially with things like subject headings due to their complexity, but it’s probably OK for names.
- Get others to help you find URIs You can crowdsource this – send the machine off to find Cambria and it tells you there are 2 Cambrais. Well ask people what they think is the correct Cambrai. The crowd will tell you. It’s like “Ask the audience”. Also, we had colleagues at work do this for us. Students found URIs for LCSH and DDC for us for a subset. Or if you have colleagues who have work on reception desks, where their work is stop start they can look up URIs in between dealing with visitors and forwarding phone calls.
- We learned this for DOD. Very well considered database structure. We clearly understand the semantics of our database. When we say “keyword” we know what that means. When we say “Who” we know what that means.
- We exported XML from the DOD and mapped it using an XSLT to an RDF representation of Dublin Core We were so very pleased to make some RDF. But we really really hated that we had to squeeze our data in to dublin core and in doing this it caused us to lose data and semantics
- We didn’t like that we were losing semantics We spend a lot of money on smart people and we don’t want to lose the meaning as we transform to other format In the DOD, DOD:who is much much richer than DC:creator. In DOD we can indicate roles such as Author, depicted, is collector, is subject of. This is lost as we transform to DC
- So we explored a different approach, actually a more open approach. We published the structure of the DOD as an RDF representation. Converted it into LOD It means everyone can see how you structure you data. It is open You don’t need to compromise your data. It’s in its original format. And then you can write mappings in to other formats Can have you cake and eat it!
- To do this you need some kind of registry to record and publish your element set. It’s actually quite straightforwad It means everyone can see how you structure you data. It is open You don’t need to comprimise your data. It’s in its orgina
- In terms of linked data you don’t need to worry about the bibliographic universe. Someone else will sort that, the publishers or the national libraries. What you should concentrate on are your unique collections. Describe them and describe them well. You probably already do that, or are thinking of doing it.
- When you have limited resources only focus on your unique collections, invest your time there. For example the published output of the UK available as LOD – that’s a problem for national libraries. BL have started doing this by publishing LOD for BNB. Invest your effort on what is unique. Perhaps that photo collection. Perhaps those local history pamphlets. Perhaps those manuscripts Best contribution. You will then make the best contribution. You wont be replicating anything else that is being done and you can be satisfied that it is a valueable contribution. You add to the linked data universe, you don’t duplicate it. BEST metadata – what we’re thinking about in the Library is, coz of our strategy, we will most likely digitised a lot fo unique material such as our manuscripts and archives. To do that we need to touch the describe them. As we describe them we can record URIs from open vocabularies. So we improve access to the collections in terms of traditional and linked metadata and access in that we can present a digital version of the original. WIN WIN WIN
- So to recap
- We were interested in learning more about RDA, not the faux RDA we use in MARC but real pure RDA. RDA has an RDF representation which basically means its linked data. The RDA elements are registered as URIs in the Open Metadata Registry, which means anyone and anything (machines) can view and use them and see the semantics. RIMMF is a training tool that lets you work in pure RDA and interact with common vocabularies like LCNAF and then output RDF (and if you must MARC) You could publish that as a document, but then you would have to issue updates everytime something changed - a registry has much better functionality if the RDF is likely to change, which RDA is/does
- It’s the O in open. To link you need to publish open coz others will use and re-use your metadata for the purposes of linking. If you’re nervous about this remember Metadata is an advert to the resource, it isn’t the resource. Your digital object can be licensed another way You don’t need to publish all of your metadata as CC-0. Perhaps you have curated info that you want to retain the intellectual property over. Just don’t include it with the metadata that is CC-0 So you might not be able to do anything to make your metadata linked but others will do it for you. For example giving your metadata for digital resources to Europeana and they will turn it into linked open data to power Europeana. The data your sending to OCLC is being turned in to linked data.
- use open vocabularies the big library ones are: DDC LCNAF LCSH TGMI the others are TGN, AAT, and perhaps v specificy vocs for your collection focus If you have a specialised local voc then consider publishing it and mapping to other open vocabularies
- Demand better systems that can use modern content standards such as RDA That can help you manage URIs (creation, deprecation) Help you publish LOD and make RDF represenations
- Services that LOD relies on are all in beta. DDC is down, LC was down for maintenance, we don’t have systems do manage URIs. It’s all in Beta It’s difficult convincing management to make even modest investment coz is difficult to demonstrate. We’re going that way anyway …. It’s a continuum.