Introducing Linked Data ISD Spotlight Presented by Alison Hitchens 2013

Objective  To introduce the concept of linked data without too much technical stuff! (because every conference you attend these days mentions linked data or linked open data or linked library data or linked open library data!) (or you will see tweets with #lod #lodlam) Introducing Linked Data 2

Definition of Linked Data "describes a method of publishing structured data so that it can be interlinked and become more useful. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP, RDF 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.” (emphasis added) Introducing Linked Data 3 From Wikipedia linked data pageWikipedia linked data

Human-readable vs. machine- actionable*  Look at this Wikipedia page and tell me what you know about Margaret Atwood from looking at the pageWikipedia page Introducing Linked Data 4 *rather than machine-readable, library consultant Karen Coyle often uses the term actionable data, which I find easier to understand. See her Library Technology Report on the semantic web.Library Technology Report

The classic web Introducing Linked Data 5 Margaret Atwood Wikipedia Margaret Atwood homepage resource Click on link text or URL URL Inspired by a slide by Eric Millerslide by Eric Miller

A linked data web Introducing Linked Data 6 Inspired by a semantic web slide by Eric Millersemantic web slide Alison’s guide to Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood person atwood.ca/ Is subject of Is type of Has homepage Undefined URL link

Use Structured Data Introducing Linked Data 7 Textual data Date Currency

Identify your data  This resource is a person  Name: “Margaret Atwood”  Birth date:  Place of birth: Ottawa, Ontario  Occupation: novelist  Occupation: poet  Author of: “The Handmaid’s Tale” Introducing Linked Data 8

Publish your data on the web  The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) combines authorities from many national libraries and has made the records available on the web  With a permanent identifier  In multiple web-friendly formats Go to Record for Margaret Atwood in VIAFRecord for Margaret Atwood Introducing Linked Data 9

Make connections  Build connections between your data records and other datasets  Many datasets link to DbPedia which is the data behind Wikipedia Go to DbPedia page for Margaret Atwood and find the VIAF identifierDbPedia page for Margaret Atwood Introducing Linked Data 10

The famous linked data cloud  The linked data cloud shows the connections between datasets on the weblinked data cloud Introducing Linked Data 11 Excerpt from: “Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch.

Connect your data  This resource is a person  Use class of persons from the Friend of a Friend (FOAF)ontologyFriend of a Friend  Place of birth: Ottawa, Ontario  Could link to GeonamesGeonames  Occupation: novelist  Could link to LCSH termLCSH  Author of: “The Handmaid’s Tale”  Could link to The Open Library pageThe Open Library Introducing Linked Data 12

Library Use Cases*  Enrich our bibliographic data  Enrich our authority data  Align subject vocabularies  Share our unique collections and information Introducing Linked Data 13 *for our next linked data session!

Some technical stuff*  Ideally everything has a uniform resource identifier (URI) e.g.  Data is modeled using Resource Description Framework (RDF)  Use a common format such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) *for our next linked data session! Introducing Linked Data 14

Some resources  Colye, Karen. Understanding the semantic web: bibliographic data and metadata. Chicago: American Library Association, 2010 (Library Technology reports ; v. 46, no. 1) access at / (subscription required) /  Harper, Corey. Library linked data: tuning library metadata for the semantic web. An ALCTS webcast, March access at 11 (open access) 11  Berners-Lee, Tim. The next web. A TED talk, February access at (open access)  Heath, Tom and Christian Bizer (2011) Linked Data: Evolving the Web into a Global Data Space. 1 st ed. Morgan & Claypool, (Synthesis Lectures on the Semantic Web: Theory and Technology, 1:1) (open access) Introducing Linked Data 15

Acknowledgments  Thank you to library consultant Karen Coyle who explains these concepts in such a straight-forward way  Thank you to Corey Harper at NYU and MJ Suhonos who are very patient and encouraging; they have answered many of my LOD questions and reviewed presentations for me Introducing Linked Data 16

Thanks! Alison Hitchens Cataloguing & Metadata Librarian University of Waterloo Library Introducing Linked Data 17