Forging Links & Breaking Shackles The Linked Open Data BNB Brenda Young Metadata Systems Manager

2 Linked Data & Ex Libris  2011 IGeLU conference at University of Haifa included a linked data session (See: /archive-of-presentations ) /archive-of-presentations  The Linked Open Data SIWG was created after the event “… to achieve essential linked open data features in all Ex Libris products where appropriate, both from the data publishing, the data consuming and the data integration perspective”  Contact Lukas Koster, University of Amsterdam Library for more information

3 British Library Metadata Services Background Has its roots in The British National Bibliography Ltd prior to the BL’s foundation The BL supplies metadata to: Increase visibility of holdings & connect users to BL content, e.g. via OCLC, COPAC etc Participate in collaborative national & international cataloguing initiatives, e.g. ISDS, SUNCAT Support free and priced bibliographic services

4 A Changing Bibliographic Environment… Library Sector Relevance Declining? “I did my PhD with only 12 visits to a library. That was 5 years ago; things have improved since then, now you don’t need to use a library at all!” Increasing? “The release of library data offers the opportunity for it to be used in ways un-thought of by the library & information community…”

New External Drivers Putting Public Sector Data To Work The web accelerated development of a collaboration culture & fostered expectation that information should be freely available 2009 saw an increasing Government commitment to the principle of opening up public data for wider reuse Public data will be released under open licences which enable free reuse, including commercial reuse

New External Drivers Linked Open Data Government proposes a 5 star rating for open public data:  Available on the web (any format), with an open licence  As 1 star + available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. Excel)  As 2 star + but non- proprietary format  All the above + open standards from the World Wide Web Consortium  All the above + link your data to other people’s data to provide context

7 So What Are We Doing? Rising expectations & technical developments make it essential the BL responds We are meeting the challenge of the new environment by:  Developing an open metadata strategy  Freely offering foundational metadata  Collaborating with the community on innovative new services (e.g. linked data) to advance understanding

8 Open Metadata Strategy Objectives  Adopt a multi-threaded approach addressing the needs of:  Traditional libraries  Researchers using new metadata processing techniques  Linked data developers  Remove barriers & enable innovation without unnecessary restrictions  Migrate from library to cross- domain standards, developing solutions with users

9 What Have We Achieved? Signed over 600 organisations in 80 countries to z39.50 service Supplied catalogue metadata in new formats under CC0 licenses e.g. the Open Library, BBC & Wikimedia Commons Worked with Government, W3C & developers on technical, standards & licensing issues Created a linked data version of the British National Bibliography

10 Why Should We Be Interested In Linked Data? See:

11 Our Linked Data Journey What to Offer? We wanted to:  Advance debate from theory to practice via release of a ‘critical mass’ of data  Show commitment by using a large, core dataset: niche examples are not as compelling Why BNB?  A reusable dataset of published output: not a unique institutional catalogue  Uniform format over 60 years & 3 million records in many languages

12 The BNB & Linked Data Selecting Sites For Linking To put BNB data in a wider context  We blended general linked resources:  GeoNames  Lexvo  RDF Book Mashup  With key linked library resources:  LCSH  VIAF  Dewey.info

13 Collaboration BL Metadata Services  BNB Data  Catalogue Bridge Utilities and tools for manipulating MARC21 data  TMQ MARC Global Tools  Analysts Bibliographic Data Analysis MARC to RDF mapping XSLT Conversion scripts  Production team Match & merge Bulk processing Talis  Training RDF SPARQL  Technical Infrastructure  Data Modelling Assistance

14 The BNB & Linked Data Remodelling

15 MARC21 to RDF Conversion Workflow MARC to RDF conversion Consists of multiple automated steps Selection Pre-processing Character set conversion URI generation  Data transformation Selection Pre-processing Character set conversion URI generation Selection Pre-processing Character set conversion URI generation Data transformation Create & load triples

16 The BNB & Linked Data Vocabularies used  Bibliographic Ontology  Bio: a Vocabulary for Biographical Information  British Library Terms  Dublin Core  Event Ontology  FOAF: Friend of a Friend  ISBD  Org: an Organisation Ontology  OWL  SKOS  RDF Schema  WGS84 Geo Positioning Sample data can be downloaded from:

17 The BNB & Linked Data Format Conversion - MARC

18 The BNB & Linked Data Format Conversion – RDF/XML

19 The BNB & Linked Data Format Conversion – Triples

20 Where Did We Get To? Multiple Access Routes. BNB Books Million Records 90 Million Unique Triples bnb.data.bl.uk/sparql thedatahub.org/dataset/bluk-bnb-basic thedatahub.org/dataset/bluk-bnb bnb.data.bl.uk/describe bnb.data.bl.uk/search

21 Achievements  Presence & visibility  New library data model - being utilised by wider groups  New opportunities for collaboration - with public & private sector organisations  Confirmation that valuable data will be used – e.g. up to 8 million monthly transactions

22 Lessons Learned Its a New Way of Thinking…  Give thought to data modelling & sustainability: Data wasn’t originally designed for this  Everyone is learning: you may be the best judge  There may be tools or expertise out there: don’t reinvent the wheel  Conversion inevitably identifies hidden data issues: & creates new ones!  Offer sample data for feedback: & continually improve…

23 Library Linked Data Wish List? We Need More…  Tools to link library data to other resources  LMS integration of linked data options  Navigation & visualisation applications  Feedback on usage  Collaboration on shared approaches

24 Next Steps? Linked Open BNB See: Next steps:  Complete staged release  Offer monthly updates once complete  Documentation & further refinement of data model  Identify what could be offered or linked to next? Questions? Images from