Publishing the British National Bibliography as Linked Open Data Corine Deliot Metadata Standards Analyst British Library CIG Event Birmingham, 25 November 2013 © The British Library Board 2013

2 Overview Motivations and approach The modelling process and the data model Technical process: from MARC 21 to RDF Linking to external datasets Outcomes – datasets/platform/access Plans for future developments Use of the BNB data Benefits Challenges

3 Motivations Publishing our data for others to re-use Looking beyond library audiences Taking part in the Linked Data conversation

4 How? Pragmatic, bottom-up approach Using existing staff Building on existing skills Using existing tools as much as possible

5 Why BNB? General bibliography - not a unique institutional catalogue Consistent format - over 60 years Size & range of content - 3 million records on all subjects in many languages Control of metadata – publishable as CC0. © Waldir/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA-3.0 Usage terms:

6 The modelling process (I) identify our objects of interest, i.e. what does the MARC record says about “things in the world”  e.g. Bibliographic resources, people, organizations, places, subjects, etc. Assign URIs to identify these objects of interests

7 URIs: Things to think about Create our own URIs or use existing ones?  e.g. Create opaque or transparent URIs? e.g. or What pattern?  URI pattern guidance from the UK Cabinet Office “Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector” Create valid, i.e. syntax conformant URIs

8 URI patterns number}/{dewey-number}

9 URI patterns

10 The modelling process (II) Describe these objects of interest, i.e. use classes and how they relate to each other, i.e. use properties  Use classes and properties from existing RDF vocabularies  Define our own classes and properties when required; documented in the British Library Terms RDF schema

11 RDF Vocabularies 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 RDA RDF RDF Schema SKOS WGS84 Geo Positioning

12 RDF Vocabularies Bibliographic Resource  Dublin Core  Bibliographic Ontology  ISBD  British Library Terms Event  Event Ontology  British Library Terms Person/Organization  FOAF: Friend of a Friend  Bio: a Vocabulary for Biographical Information  Org: an Organisation Ontology  RDA Place  WGS84 Geo Positioning Concept  SKOS  British Library Terms RDF RDF Schema OWL

13 The British Library Terms RDF blt:. Existing property not quite right (e.g. not granular enough)  e.g. dcterms:identifier vs blt:bnb

14 The British Library Terms RDF blt:. Property or class required by specific feature of the model  e.g. blt:publication and blt:PublicationEvent (rdfs:subclass of event:Event)

15 The British Library Terms RDF blt:. For pragmatic reasons, e.g. facilitate searching and navigating through the graph  e.g. blt:TopicLCSH and blt:TopicDDC  e.g. blt:hasCreated owl:inverseOf dcterms:creator

16 The BNB data model - Books

17 Data Model Features (I): the Bibliographic Resource

18 Data Model Features (II): Publication as an dcterms:. dc:publisher “Publisher” ; dcterms:issued “Date” ; ?:placeOfPublication event:. blt:publication. event:place ; event:agent ; event:time. Usual approach Event-based approach

19 Data model features (III) Birth and death are modelled as biographical events extensive use of foaf:focus to relate “things in the world” (e.g. people, organizations, places) to their SKOS concepts.  e.g. “London”, the capital of England and the UK as a single “thing in the world” may be the “focus” of multiple concepts belonging to different concept schemes, e.g. thesauri (LCSH, Rameau, etc.) foaf:focus. s-their-conceptualisations-skos-foaffocus-modelling- choices.htmlhttp://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2011/09/thing s-their-conceptualisations-skos-foaffocus-modelling- choices.html by Pete Johnston

20 MARC to RDF Conversion Workflow Process Selection Character set conversion Pre-processing URI generation Data transformation Create & load triples Produce VoiD descriptions Tools Catalogue Bridge Utilities MARC Global/MARC Report Jena Eyeball

21 Linking to external sources (I) To give our data broader context we linked to: General resources: GeoNames Lexvo RDF Book Mashup Library resources: LCSH VIAF Dewey.info MARC language and country codes

22 Linking to external sources (II) Techniques included: Automatic generation from record data Auto text match with linked data dumps Crosswalk matching for coded data © Silverspoon/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA-3.0 Usage terms: sa/3.0/

23 Outcomes Two datasets – Books and Serials - and their VoID descriptions, accessible at: BNB Linked data platform: SPARQL endpoint: SPARQL editor: Bulk downloads:  Updated monthly  Serializations available: RDF/XML, N-Triples “Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. Usage terms:

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28 Platform change initial Talis platform 2013 – data migration to TSO platform  Tendering process  Migration of data and services over a couple of months

29 Plans for Future Developments Refine and extend the model Investigate frbr-ization Link to other external sources Geonames at city level ISNI, LC/NACO, DBpedia DNB bibliographic resources Expand scope beyond current BNB Improve developer support

30 Use of the BNB data Statistics  e.g. Number of hits on the SPARQL endpoint  e.g. Number of downloads on the BL webpage BNB data used in pilot projects  e.g. Linked Open BNB data used as test data for a semantic search demonstrator. Anecdotal evidence Use is difficult to assess; part and parcel of the data being open and available for all to use.

31 Benefits of Linked Open Data We have learnt a lot about the practical aspects of working with linked data. The data model got some attention.  Re-used by Danish Bibliographic Centre (DBC)  Stanford Linked Data Workshop Technology Plan ““…ensure resulting model retains the BL’s high-level focus and its web derived, transparent structure for representing facts about people, organizations, places, events, and topics” LOD raised the Library’s profile internally and externally LOD helped us focus our legacy data enhancement activities

32 Challenges Converting MARC data into RDF! Publication event approach: transforming transcribed text into data URI creation from string  may result in duplication  changes over time may also produce duplication. Legacy data issues  e.g. inconsistency of the data  e.g. cataloguers using inadequate input tools for diacritics This is (relatively) new, nobody has all the answers

33 For further information Thank you. Questions?