Smithsonian CTO Series presentation, September 16, 2011

1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pict_u_re/2372235999
Linked Open Data
in
Libraries, Archives & Museums
Smithsonian Institution @jonvoss
September 16, 2011
Jon Voss
Historypin Strategic Partnerships Director
jon.voss@wearewhatwedo.org

2. Welcome
• Goal: a solid, basic, conceptual understanding of Linked
Open Data

3. Welcome
• Goal: a solid, basic, conceptual understanding of Linked
Open Data
• A chance to collaborate with others, share knowledge,
expertise, perspective; explore ideas

4. Linked Open Data
in
Libraries, Archive & Museums
Culture
Technology
LODLAM Law

5. Linked Open Data
in
Libraries, Archive & Museums
Culture
LODLAM

6. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ohiouniversitylibraries/3485066089/

7. Linked Open Data in Cultural Context
• It’s not just Libraries, • Changing expectations from
Archives & Museums audiences, curators,
technologists
• Linked Open Data has
evolved in the cultural • Increasingly Collaborative
context of shared
information, music, movies • http://
mashupbreakdown.com/
• From rock to rap to hip-hop
to mashups, industry lagging
behind cultural change

9. The DJ in the Library?

10. History & Mashup Culture
+
2010 National Archives Photo Contest
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37377809@N00/5304492185/in/pool-1633053@N21/

11. History & Mashup Culture
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37377809

12. 2009
Linked
Open
Data
photos by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE, TED

13. Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/

15. The LOD cloud as a whole grew
by 300% in 2010
http://swib.org/swib11/

16. The LOD cloud as a whole grew
by 300% in 2010
whereas
the amount of data
relevant for libraries
grew by nearly
1000%
http://swib.org/swib11/

17. LODLAM is a Growing Movement
• in its infancy, but picking up steam
• it requires experimentation
• small, niche, domain-specific implementations
• use cases, reasons for content providers to get excited about
contributing

18. LODLAM is a product of our increasingly
connected culture.
• it’s an unfolding story, but it’s awn...
• http://lod-lam.net
• June 2-3, 100 people gathered from around the world to
forward LODLAM in the next year

19. LODLAM is a product of our increasingly
connected culture.
• and that’s just the beginning...
Linked Open Data

20. Linked Open Data
in
Libraries, Archive & Museums
Technology
LODLAM

21. Linked
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL6048721W/Linked

22. Going from Tables to Graphs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasjwoods-com/2264301251

23. Going from Tables to Graphs
• nodes and links in a graph

24. Going from Tables to Graphs
• As computing power increases, the ability to build
more and more complex graphs becomes a reality.
• Human vs. Machine readable
msulibraries lookbackmaps
msulibraries internetarchive
msulibraries librarycongress
lookbackmaps internetarchive
internetarchive librarycongress

25. Introducing Triples
Nodes & Links
jonvoss

26. Introducing Triples
Nodes & Links
follows
jonvoss

27. Introducing Triples
Nodes & Links
follows
jonvoss SILibraries

28. Introducing Triples
Nodes & Links
follows
jonvoss SILibraries
• Quite simply: Subject, Predicate, Object

29. Introducing Triples
Nodes & Links
follows
jonvoss SILibraries
• Quite simply: Subject, Predicate, Object
• gives us the ability to describe entities in a way that is
machine readable

30. What do we know about the person: Ed
Summers (aside from the fact that he
rocks)?
Bio: Hacker for libraries, digital archaeologist, pragmatist.
bio
knows
depiction of
knows
http://inkdroid.org/ehs.rdf

31. Triples for machines
• triples can be serialized in many different ways,
including Resource Description
Framework, RDF/XML, RDFa, N3, Turtle, etc,
but they all describe things in the
<subject><predicate><object> format.
• of course, we need to be consistent and
predictable for machines to understand us.

32. • we’re almost ready to talk to machines
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oface/3306994117/

33. http://inkdroid.org/ehs.rdf

34. • consider graph demo: http://civilwardata150.net
• Civil War vocabulary, or a way to link and traverse
across datasets
• Regiments, Battles, Places
• Building apps that use this data

38. Now that we can see the code...
• Books
• Photos
• Information

41. Tim Berners-Lee’s 4 rules of Linked Data
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

42. Tim Berners-Lee’s 4 rules of Linked Data
• Use URIs as names for things
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

43. Tim Berners-Lee’s 4 rules of Linked Data
• Use URIs as names for things
• Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those
names.
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

44. Tim Berners-Lee’s 4 rules of Linked Data
• Use URIs as names for things
• Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those
names.
• When someone looks up a URI, provide useful
information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL)
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

45. Tim Berners-Lee’s 4 rules of Linked Data
• Use URIs as names for things
• Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those
names.
• When someone looks up a URI, provide useful
information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL)
• Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover
more things.
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

46. Tim Berners-Lee: 5 Stars of Linked Data
• This is NOT all or nothing
More thanks to Ed Summers: http://inkdroid.org/journal/2010/06/04/the-5-
stars-of-open-linked-data/

47. A cautionary word about vocabularies
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillygwailo/272291003/

48. A cautionary word about vocabularies
• Caution: what libraries call vocabularies is not
necessarily what we mean...
• This is how we organize information and
triangulate the data we’re looking for
• How we agree on predicates
• Ontologies like FOAF, OWL, http://id.loc.gov/,
VIAF, etc.

49. In summary Linked
• Graphs
• Human AND Machine readable
• Triples, RDF
• Vocabulary, agreed terms for organizing info

50. Linked Open Data
in
Libraries, Archive & Museums
LODLAM Law

51. The “Open” part of Linked Open
Open Data
• Considerations and ramifications
• Difference between shared, published, open
• Legal tools
• Precedents/Examples

52. Expose yourself, be vulnerable
• This is the major cultural shift, the tide rising
amongst institutions, that data wants to be free in
a culture economy.
• There is value in sharing
• It does require a leap of faith, but risks and
rewards should be carefully considered and
calculated
• Excellent resource: JISC Open Bibliographic Data
Guide http://obd.jisc.ac.uk/

53. What will happen to your data?
• If you want people to do something with your
data/metadata, you have to put it out there
• But once you do, it’s [mostly] out of your control.
Yet it can be a part of something much greater
than any of the component parts
• Roots and Wings
• Lessig: Humility of the Web

54. What will happen to your data?
• working with
Open Data
from NOAA
at wherecamp
2011.
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/history/CivilWar/

55. Metadata vs. data, assets, digital
surrogates
• A key conceptual shift with Open Data is
looking at metadata and data as two separate
things, that can have different licensing and
permissions

56. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/item/2003653763/

57. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003653763/marc/

58. What are the legal tools for
publishing Open Data?

59. Legal Tools
• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
• http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/
Open Data Published Data
CC BY CC BY-NC-ND
CC0
CC BY-NC
Public Domain Mark
CC BY-ND
Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)
CC BY-SA
Attribution License (ODC-By)
Open Database License (ODC-ODbL) CC BY-NC-SA

60. Concerns and Limitations
• There is some argument about whether or not
metadata can be protected under copyright at all.
Copyright protects a creative work, and some
argue that metadata is scientific fact, rather than
creative work.
• Databases are protected differently in the EU and
US, for example.
• Public Domain and No Known Copyright
Restrictions...
• Issuing blanket copyright over all works on a
website, even though some may be in the public
domain

61. Examples and precedents
• Bibliographic data:
• British Library (CC0), University of Michigan
(CC0), Stanford (CC-BY) have published large,
raw datasets of original bibliographic data they
have created

62. Examples and precedents
• Civil War Data 150
• Metadata from contributing federal
institutions are largely considered to be Public
Domain.
• State, local, university & individual researchers
are considering policies for metadata
publishing on a case by case basis.

63. Examples and precedents
http://googleancientplaces.wordpress.com/public-domain/

64. http://ckan.net/

65. Sciences leading the way vs. Humanities?
• In the sciences, there have been a lot of advances
in the realm of Open Data, which will provide
models for humanities research as well

66. Sciences leading the way vs. Humanities?
• In the sciences, there have been a lot of advances
in the realm of Open Data, which will provide
models for humanities research as well
• Nano Publishing: the idea of publishing
datasets separately from research findings, so
that it can more easily be built upon and
integrated into other datasets. Several scientific
journals have already started this.

67. Sciences leading the way vs. Humanities?
• In the sciences, there have been a lot of advances
in the realm of Open Data, which will provide
models for humanities research as well
• Nano Publishing: the idea of publishing
datasets separately from research findings, so
that it can more easily be built upon and
integrated into other datasets. Several scientific
journals have already started this.
• Federally funded medical research must have a
data management plan and some funders are
requiring that data be published separately from
analysis and findings as Open Data

68. In summary Open
• put it out there...
• legal tools
• published, shared, and/or open
• metadata vs. assets

69. What Would You Do?
• Conceptualizing domains, Linked Open
Data projects, collaborations, etc

70. Google Refine
• A tool for large datasets, cleaning and reconciling
• http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/
• Extremely powerful, though scripting language has
not yet been very well documented.
• Enables you to reconcile data against the 20 million
+ known entities in Freebase

71. Join the LODLAM movement
• #lodlam hashtag on Twitter

72. Join the LODLAM movement
• #lodlam hashtag on Twitter
• http://groups.google.com/group/lod-lam

73. Join the LODLAM movement
• #lodlam hashtag on Twitter
• http://groups.google.com/group/lod-lam
• http://lod-lam.net proceedings online and
on the road for the next year at various
annual meetings and conferences

74. Join the LODLAM movement
• #lodlam hashtag on Twitter
• http://groups.google.com/group/lod-lam
• http://lod-lam.net proceedings online and
on the road for the next year at various
annual meetings and conferences
• Contribute!

75. You’re not alone...