Presented for Reaching Across Illinois Libraries System (RAILS) on October 7, 2015

1. Linked Data
and Libraries:
What? Why?
How?
Emily Dust Nimsakont
Head of Cataloging & Resource Management
Schmid Law Library, University of Nebraska
College of Law
RAILS Webinar
October 7, 2015Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytudut/5197551003/

2. What is
Linked
Data?

3. “It builds upon standard Web technologies
such as HTTP 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.”
“This enables data from different sources
to be connected and queried.”
“…linked data describes a method of
publishing structured data so that it can be
interlinked and become more useful.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_data

4. web of documents
vs.
web of data

5. resource
resource
resource
resource
resource links to
links to
links to
links to
links to

6. data links to
links to
links to
links to
data data
data
data
data
data
data
data
data
data
datalinks to

7. Relationships are key
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brenda-starr/3509344100/

8. Encoded meaning
<h1>This is a heading.</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<h1>My Favorite Trees</h1>
<p>I like oak trees.</p>
<p>I also like maple trees.</p>

9. Encoded meaning
<rdf:Description
rdf:about="http://www.recshop.fake/cd/Empire
Burlesque">
<cd:artist>Bob Dylan</cd:artist>
<cd:country>USA</cd:country>
<cd:company>Columbia</cd:company>
<cd:price>10.90</cd:price>
<cd:year>1985</cd:year>
</rdf:Description>
http://www.w3schools.com/rdf/rdf_example.asp

10. Links between entities
<rdf:Description rdf:about=“http://www4.wiwiss.fu-
berlin.de/bookmashup/books/0375507256”>
<rev:hasReview rdf:resource=“http://www4.wiwiss.fu-
berlin.de/bookmashup/reviews/0375507256_EditorialReview1
”/>
<dc:creator rdf:resource=“http://www4.wiwiss.fu-
berlin.de/bookmashup/persons/David+Mitchell”/>
<dc:format>Paperback</dc:format>
<dc:identifier rdf:resource=“urn:ISBN:0375507256”/>
<dc:publisher>Random House Trade Paperbacks</dc:publisher>
<dc:title>Cloud Atlas: A Novel</dc:title>
</rdf:Description>
http://commonplace.net/2009/06/linked-data-for-libraries/

11. 1. Data instead of documents
2. Relationships are key
3. Encoded meaning
4. Links between entities
So what?

12. Linked
Data
makes the
Web into a
database.

13. “Just as the traditional document Web can be
crawled by following hypertext links, the Web of
Data can be crawled by following RDF links.
Working on the crawled data, search engines can
provide sophisticated query capabilities...
Because the query results themselves are
structured data, not just links to HTML pages, they
can be immediately processed, thus enabling a
new class of applications based on the Web of
Data.”
Chris Bizer, Richard Cyganiak, and Tom Heath
How to Publish Linked Data on the Web
http://linkeddata.org/docs/how-to-publish

14. Why should librarians care
about Linked Data?
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stovak/2378145902/

15. “…the Library community’s data carrier,
MARC, is ‘based on forty-year-old
techniques for data management and is out
of step with programming styles of today.’”
“…something new is now
needed…”
“The new bibliographic framework project
will be focused on…Linked Data
principles and mechanisms…”
“A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age” http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-103111.html

16. BIBFRAME
Bibliographic Framework
Transition Initiative
http://bibframe.org
http://loc.gov/bibframe

17. OpenCat

18. http://files.dnb.de/svensson/UILLD2013/UILLD-submission-3-formatted-final.pdf

19. OpenCat
http://files.dnb.de/svensson/UILLD2013/UILLD-submission-3-formatted-final.pdf

20. Web Visibility
“When my community searches the web for
something we have, we better show up as an
option.”
Chuck Gibson, Director & CEO
Worthington Public Library
“The Visible Library,” Library Journal Webcast, February 26, 2015
http://goo.gl/8NErmA

22. How does
Linked Data
happen?

23. Linked Data Principles
Tim Berners-Lee, “Linked Data-Design Issues.”
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html
Use URIs as names
for things
Use HTTP URIs so
people can look up
these names
When someone looks
up a URI, provide
useful information,
using the standards
Include links to other
URIs, so that they can
discover more things

24. URIs
Uniform Resource Identifiers = unique
identifiers
http://www.example.com/thing1

25. RDF
Resource Description Framework
Describes relationships based on triples (statements):
subject-predicate-object
http://www.w3.org/RDF

26. RDF
subject object
A Christmas
Carol
Charles
Dickens
has
author
predicate

27. RDF Graph
Charles
Dickens
A Christmas
Carol
has
author has
publisher
Penguin

28. RDF Graph with URIs
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/
names/n78087607/
http://example.org/books/2002275771
http://example.org
/hasAuthor
http://example.org/hasPublisher
http://example.org/publishers
/12345

29. RDF
<rdf:Description
rdf:about=“http://example.org/books/2002275771”>
<dc:creator
rdf:resource=“http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n78
087607”/>
<dc:publisher
ref:resource=“http://example.org/publishers/12345”
/>
</rdf:Description>

30. Ontologies
An ontology is a vocabulary of specific
terms to be used to describe resources.
Sound familiar?

31. 5 Stars of Linked Open Data
★ Available on the web
★★ Available as structured data
★★★ Available in a non-proprietary format
★★★★ Use open standards to identify things,
so people can point at your stuff
★★★★★ Link your data to other people’s data
to provide context
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

32. Linked OPEN
Data
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eirikref/727551264/

33. Why should
libraries care
about Linked
Data?

34. Changes to
bibliographic
data

35. In traditional
cataloging, a
record is one
package.
Author
Title
Bibliographic Record

36. Bibliographic
Record
Records can be exchanged,
but there is no way to
exchange the individual
pieces of information
within a record.
Bibliographic
Record
Bibliographic
Record

37. Person
Is author of
Title
Bibliographic Record
With Linked Data, a bibliographic record
is made up of many pieces of data.
And the
relationships
between
these pieces
of data are
defined.

38. Person
Is author of
Title
Bibliographic Record
The
boundaries
of the
record can
be
dissolved…

39. Person
Is author of
Title
Bibliographic Record
…and the
data can
interact with
other
information
on the
Web…

40. Person
Is author of
Title
Bibliographic Record
…and make
use of other
data on the
web.

41. New
federated
search
possibilities

42. New ways
of
searching
our catalogs

43. New homes
for
librarians’
skills

44. Are there
sources of
linked library
data?

45. http://id.loc.gov

47. http://viaf.org

48. http://dewey.info/

49. http://rdvocab.info/

52. http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/

53. What does
Linked Data
look like?

54. http://www.nines.org

56. http://www.civilwardata150.net/

57. http://www.openlibrary.org

59. Resources

60. How to Publish Linked Data on the Web
by Chris Bizer, Richard Cyganiak, and
Tom Heath
http://linkeddata.org/docs/how-to-publish

61. Linked Open Data in Libraries,
Archives, and Museums
http://lod-lam.net/

62. ALA Linked Data Interest Group
http://connect.ala.org/node/142470

63. Bibliographic Framework
Transition Initiative
http://www.loc.gov/bibframe
http://bibframe.org

64. Thank you!
Emily Dust Nimsakont
Head of Cataloging & Resource Management
Schmid Law Library, University of Nebraska
College of Law
enimsakont@gmail.com
http://slideshare.net/enimsakont
http://delicious.com/enimsakont/linkeddata