One sector that has been very active in the adoption of Linked Data is that of libraries. In an effort to highlight this activity, SemanticWeb.com, supported by OCLC and LITA, put out a call last month for work that promoted or demonstrated the benefits of linked data for libraries.

After receiving a number of excellent nominations, we are pleased to announce that Kevin Ford, from the Network Development and MARC Standards Office at the Library of Congress, was selected to showcase his work with the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME) and his continuing work on the Library of Congress’s Linked Data Service (loc.id). In addition to being an active contributor, Kevin is responsible for the BIBFRAME website; has devised tools to view MARC records and the resulting BIBFRAME resources side-by-side; authored the first transformation code for MARC data to BIBFRAME resources; and is project manager for The Library of Congress’ Linked Data Service. Kevin also writes and presents frequently to promote BIBFRAME, ID.LOC.GOV, and educate fellow librarians on the possibilities of linked data.

Congratulations to Kevin!

If you want to learn more about BIBFRAME and the role Linked Data is playing in the world of libraries, join us at Semantic Technology & Business Conference, June 2-5 where Kevin’s colleague from the Library of Congress, Nate Trail, will deliver a lightning talk on BIBFRAME, and Richard Wallis of the OCLC will present From Record to Graph – Exposing a Legacy.

Image Courtesy Flickr/ Paul Lowry

Yesterday The Semantic Link Podcast featured Karen Coyle, a consultant in library technology who’s consulted for esteemed institutions including the Library of Congress. Coyle discussed libraries’ long history with metadata, including with the MARC (machine-readable cataloging) format for nearly 50 years, and of sharing that metadata. That history helps explain why libraries, she said, are looking at semantic web technology – but also why changes to established processes are huge undertakings. “The move toward Linked Data will be the most significant change in library data in these two centuries,” she said, requiring the move from mainly textual data into using identifiers for things and data instead of strings.

Today, The Semantic Web Blog continues the discussion by sharing some perspectives on the topic from OCLC technology evangelist Richard Wallis. As noted in yesterday’s podcast, change has its challenges. “Getting the library community to get its head around Linked Data as a replacement for MARC … will be a bit of a challenge,” Wallis says. While more members of the library community are starting to “get” Linked Data, and what can be accomplished by extracting entities and linking between them, some still struggle with why change can’t just occur within the MARC format itself or its successor Resource Description and Access (RDA), that provides atomistic, machine-actionable data and machine-interpretable relationships. RDA, Wallis reminds us, took a decade from inception to publication and business model.

“The ramifications of turning into the Linked Data world are quite deep and meaningful but it will be a few years for that to be established in the library world,” Wallis says.

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OCLC has announced that WorldCat.org pages now include schema.org descriptive mark-up.

Created over the last four decades with the participation of thousands of member libraries, WorldCat is the world’s largest online registry of library collections. As the official press release states, “WorldCat.org now offers the largest set of linked bibliographic data on the Web. With the addition of Schema.org mark-up to all book, journal and other bibliographic resources in WorldCat.org, the entire publicly available version of WorldCat is now available for use by intelligent Web crawlers, like Google and Bing, that can make use of this metadata in search indexes and other applications.”

On the heels of the announcement earlier this week about Dewey Decimal Classifications also being available as Linked Data, this certainly marks an exciting week in the world of library information and the Semantic Web. However, this should also prove to be exciting for non-librarians, as these resources are now available beyond the world of library sciences.

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In 2005, I started learning about the so-called Semantic Web. It wasn’t till 2008, the same year I started my PhD, that I finally understood what the Semantic Web was really about. At the time, I made a $1000 bet with 3 college buddies that the Semantic Web would be mainstream by the time I finished my PhD. I know I’m going to win! In this post, I will argue why.

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The Library of Congress is working on a bibliographic framework for the digital age. According to the article, “The new bibliographic framework project will be focused on the Web environment, Linked Data principles and mechanisms, and the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a basic data model.  The protocols and ideas behind Linked Data are natural exchange mechanisms for the Web that have found substantial resonance even beyond the cultural heritage sector.  Likewise, it is expected that the use of RDF and other W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) developments will enable the integration of library data and other cultural heritage data on the Web for more expansive user access to information.” Read more

In this column “The art of Linked Data” a few of us at Zepheira will try to bring observations, reflections and practical advice from various projects applying Linked Data and thus Semantic Web principles across diverse domains.  At Zepheira we help organizations implement sophisticated Web solutions with a specialty in combining the reasoning power of people with the mechanical processing of computers.

Imagine a situation where a scientific researcher is trying to organize a variety of material for a project or paper; that material might be coming from various sources, in various formats, and with shifting context throughout. There might be related research papers (citations and references), contact information for peer researchers, information about organizations who have sponsored the research with grants or research budget, the actual scientific data collected during the research, and more.

At Zepheira we recognize that there are things that computing can achieve to make the researcher’s job much more efficient, including analysis and conversion of underlying formats, basic indexing, and cataloging. We also recognize that once you’ve done these basic things, the limitations of computing become very apparent. You can guess that a particular phrase is a place name, or that another is a title of a related paper, but in our experience such guessing leads to very uneven results. The Linked Data community has taken entity extraction and the like to very sophisticated levels, but real value comes from being able to present the framework of guesses to the researcher so he or she can create annotations in a friendly user interface. With such annotations in place we can link data and apply data services with full confidence.

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The Library of Congress is searching for an Emerging Technologies Librarian in Washington DC. The post states, “The Emerging Technologies Librarian coordinates and facilitates the design, development and deployment of information technology to support a multijurisdictional legal web presence known conceptually as the One World Law Library (OWLL), a portal to and repository of local, state, tribal, national, international legal and legislative information. By aligning with Library of Congress web developments, OWLL leverages semantic and other conceptual and relational web technologies and utilizes content integration strategies such as federated and aggregated searching technologies to provide access to global legislative, legal and law related information.” Read more

Laura Campbell, CIO of the Library of Congress, spoke at the recent SemTech Conference about how the world’s largest library leverages semantic technology to help manage the vast resources of the LoC.

The Library of Congress is “more than just a library,” said Campbell, pointing out that the LoC has “the Congressional Research Service, the Copyright Office of the U.S., and the Law Library in addition to the National Collection.” With over 146 Million items in 470 languages, represented in both analog and digital content, and with newly gathered material regularly being added from around the world, there is undeniably a lot of content to manage.

In her keynote address, Ms. Campbell spoke about how the Library of Congress is leveraging linked data technologies in three key areas:

1. Managing existing collections
2. Maintaining the LoC’s role as a leader in the distribution of canonical information
3. Fulfilling the mission to collect, preserve, and provide access to a more digital collection

The keynote in its entirety, is presented below.

To read more about one specific linked data initiative at the Library of Congress, check out this recent series about the Recollections Project.

For more great keynotes, case studies, and insight into how Semantic Web can make a difference in business, consider attending SemTechBiz UK, SemTechBiz DC, or the Semantic Media Summit in NYC.

On Monday, June 20, a group of Semantic thought leaders from around the globe met with their host and colleague, Paul Miller, for the seventh installment of the Semantic Link, a monthly podcast covering the world of Semantic Technologies. This episode includes a discussion about schema.org and a review of some of the goings-on at the recent SemTech: Semantic Technology Conference. Read more

The Cogito blog concluded its coverage of last week’s Semantic Technology Conference with a recap of Laura Campbell’s closing keynote address. Campbell is the director of strategic initiatives at the Library of Congress. Her keynote was entitled Semantic Technology at the Library of Congress: “Campbell began her presentation by explaining that one of the most pressing problems in wanting to ensure the acquisition and preservation of the largest collection of knowledge and easy access to the best examples of American creativity (strategic objectives of the Library of Congress), is management of our changing connections to available content.” Read more