The Semantic Library RDF in Practice Robert Wolfe, MIT Libraries NEASIST Awards Dinner 12 June 2008

RDF The first time I really grokked RDF I thought Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C fellows had created it just for me and my fellow library catalogers.

What is RDF? RDF is NOT anything to do with XML. RDF is a data model for organizing content and metadata. That data model is a directed Graph. There are two kinds of things in this model: Properties and Resources Subject --Predicate--> Object

Data models in Libraries Library Systems = One Model to Rule Them Digital Library = Every Project its Own Model(s) Start a Project = Figure out your content/object model and your metadata model

Pain Points of Data Modeling Clashing Content Models (e.g. DSpace and nearly everything we want to put in it) Metadata Models that aren’t Data Models (they’re Document Models)

Why is the RDF data model great? Subject --Predicate--> Object is Natural Language is extremely flexible is interoperable can record data at an atomic level

Turning the Web Semantic? The Semantic Web Interest Group imagines going beyond the separation of content and formatting. Imagine characterizing every “thing” you put up on the web with rdf “properties”. Who would go to the bother to create RDF for web resources?

I would FACADE PLEDGE Longwell SIMILE

So Would My Colleagues FRBR is a content model Librarians recognize that it’s NOT the one to rule them all METS (an XML syntax for Content Models) OAI-ORE (an RDF syntax for Content Models)

Go forth and play Check out the SIMILE tools RDFize your data Build Exhibits and Timelines but first: MODEL YOUR CONTENT and METADATA