Introducing Linked DataISD SpotlightPresented by Alison Hitchens2013

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Objective To introduce the concept of linked data

without too much technical stuff!

(because every conference you attend these days mentions linked data or linked open data or linked library data or linked open library data!)(or you will see tweets with #lod #lodlam)

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Definition of Linked Data"describes a method of publishing structured data so that it can be interlinked and become more useful. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP, RDF and URIs, but rather than using them to serve web pages for human readers, it extends them to share information in a way that can be read automatically by computers.” (emphasis added)From Wikipedia linked data page

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Human-readable vs. machine-actionable* Look at this Wikipedia page and tell me

what you know about Margaret Atwood from looking at the page

*rather than machine-readable, library consultant Karen Coyle often uses the term actionable data, which I find easier to understand. See her Library Technology Report on the semantic web.

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The classic web

Margaret Atwood Wikipedia

Margaret Atwood homepage

resource resource

Click on link text or URL

URL

Inspired by a slide by Eric Miller

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A linked data web

Inspired by a semantic web slide by Eric Miller

Alison’s guide to Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

person

http://margaretatwood.ca/

Is subject of

Is type of

Has homepageUndefined URL link

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Use Structured Data

Textual data

Date

Currency

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Identify your data This resource is a person Name: “Margaret Atwood” Birth date: 19391118 Place of birth: Ottawa, Ontario Occupation: novelist Occupation: poet Author of: “The Handmaid’s Tale”

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Publish your data on the web The Virtual International Authority File

(VIAF) combines authorities from many national libraries and has made the records available on the web With a permanent identifier In multiple web-friendly formats

Go to Record for Margaret Atwood in VIAF

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Make connections Build connections between your data

records and other datasets Many datasets link to DbPedia which is

the data behind Wikipedia

Go to DbPedia page for Margaret Atwood and find the VIAF identifier

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The famous linked data cloud The linked data cloud shows the

connections between datasets on the web

Excerpt from: “Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/”

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Connect your data This resource is a person

Use class of persons from the Friend of a Friend (FOAF)ontology

Place of birth: Ottawa, Ontario Could link to Geonames

Occupation: novelist Could link to LCSH term

Author of: “The Handmaid’s Tale” Could link to The Open Library page

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Library Use Cases* Enrich our bibliographic data Enrich our authority data Align subject vocabularies Share our unique collections and

information

*for our next linked data session!

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Some technical stuff* Ideally everything has a uniform

resource identifier (URI) e.g. http://viaf.org/viaf/109322990

Data is modeled using Resource Description Framework (RDF)

Use a common format such as Extensible Markup Language (XML)

*for our next linked data session!

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Some resources Colye, Karen. Understanding the semantic web: bibliographic data and

metadata. Chicago: American Library Association, 2010 (Library Technology reports ; v. 46, no. 1) access at http://www.metapress.com.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/content/g212v1783607/ (subscription required)

Harper, Corey. Library linked data: tuning library metadata for the semantic web. An ALCTS webcast, March 16. 2011. access at http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/cat/031611 (open access)

Berners-Lee, Tim. The next web. A TED talk, February 2009. access at http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html (open access)

Heath, Tom and Christian Bizer (2011) Linked Data: Evolving the Web into a Global Data Space. 1st ed. Morgan & Claypool, 2011. (Synthesis Lectures on the Semantic Web: Theory and Technology, 1:1) http://linkeddatabook.com/editions/1.0/ (open access)

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Acknowledgments Thank you to library consultant Karen

Coyle who explains these concepts in such a straight-forward way

Thank you to Corey Harper at NYU and MJ Suhonos who are very patient and encouraging; they have answered many of my LOD questions and reviewed presentations for me

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Thanks!Alison HitchensCataloguing & Metadata LibrarianUniversity of Waterloo Libraryahitchen@uwaterloo.ca