An article out of OpenGLAM reports, “Last week, the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) has made two large datasets available. The images, texts and metadata are now available through a dedicated API. Ten thousand Dutch eighteenth century books and almost two centuries of parliament documents are the first datasets in the new service of the KB: dataservices. In the next months, more datasets will be released, accompanied with comprehensive documentation how the data can and cannot be used. They invite the user and developers to find appropiate ways of reusing the data and give a new purpose to it.” Read more

Dirk Willem van Gulik, Chief Technical Architect of the BBC recently discussed the company’s multiple uses of the BBC’s archive. He writes, “It is an enormous collection of building blocks for creativity , and it has been used for many years by programme makers inside and outside the BBC to provide inspiration and material. For some time now I’ve been part of the team driving a move to digital storage and distribution for the archive, and I can see clearly that this creates entirely new opportunities for making the BBC’s history more widely available – where we have the rights to do so – as well as new ways to use it for public benefit.” Read more

Mo McRoberts of BBC recently shared a few data guides that have emerged as part of the Digital Public Space project, a project “which uses Semantic Web technology as a way to help unlock the value in the archives of the BBC and other publicly-funded institutions.” McRoberts writes, “When we spoke with project partners – and others – about publishing data in a form which makes it possible to have journeys through machine-readable catalogue data similar to the journeys through human-oriented documents that we normally experience on the Web, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, but organisations weren’t necessarily sure about the nuts and bolts of actually doing it.” Read more

Rachel Frick recently shared her thoughts on the expanding reach of linked data in the library community as part of the latest issue of the Council on Library and Information Resources journal. Frick writes, “Efforts and interest surrounding linked data and the semantic web are growing rapidly in the digital library community. I am often asked, ‘What is [the Digital Library Foundation] DLF doing in relation to linked data?’ As a community-driven organization, we need to identify where it makes the most sense for the DLF to engage, and where we can contribute for the greatest benefit. Linked data is about ‘using the Web to connect related data that wasn’t previously linked, or using the Web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods,’ according to Linkeddata.org.” Read more

Europeana, a collection of digital resources from Europe’s countless museums, libraries, and archives has launched data.europeana.eu as part of its “ongoing effort of making its metadata available as Linked Open Data on the Web. It allows others to access metadata collected from Europeana providers, via standard Web technologies, enrich this metadata and give this enriched metadata back to the providers. Links between Europeana resources and other resources in the Linked Data Web will enable discovery of semantically related resources, as, say, when two artworks are created by artists who are related to each other.” Read more

A new article from the BBC Blog discusses the future of the BBC, its archives, and the Digital Public Space project. The Digital Public Space project “is a partnership between the BBC and other cultural institutions in the UK, including museums, archives, libraries, galleries and educational bodies, all of whom share a vision of not simply using Internet technology as a distribution channel, but instead being part of that digital environment as it evolves: being part of the Web, rather than just on it.” Read more

Karen Coyle, a librarian and consultant in the field of digital libraries recently won the Outstanding Publication Award from the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS). Coyle’s winning paper is entitled “Understanding the Semantic Web: Bibliographic Data and Metadata.”

Coyle’s paper is “an insightful articulation about how library catalogs must transition to become part of the current information environment… In this thought-provoking and transformative publication, Coyle breaks new ground while still offering practical guidelines about how to achieve the goals set out for libraries to move the catalog into the Semantic Web and transform the role of library metadata in today’s Web driven world.” Read more