linked data activities at oclc ralph levan senior research scientist oclc research
TRANSCRIPT
Linked Data Activities at OCLC
Ralph LeVan
Senior Research Scientist
OCLC Research
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Brief Overview of Linked (Open) Data
•It’s about the Links• It’s about the Openness• It’s about the Data•And there are some infrastructure requirements
too
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It’s about the Links
Books• http://worldcat.org/oclc/123456
Classification numbers• http://dewey.info/class/641/about
People• http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679
Subject headings• http://tspilot.oclc.org/fast/fst01234567
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It’s about the Openness
•What sort of license is the data available in?
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It’s about the Data
<rdf:RDF><rdf:Description
rdf:about="http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679"><rdf:type rdf:resource=
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person"/><rdf:type rdf:resource="http://RDVocab.info/uri/schema/FRBRentitiesRDA/Person"/><foaf:name>Mozziconacci, Jean-Francois</foaf:name></rdf:Description>
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infrastructure
•Real World Objects•303 (See Other) redirects to Generic Objects•Content negotiation from Generic Objects•RDF available
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Dewey
It should be simple:http://dewey.info/class/641/
Browsers get redirected to:http://dewey.info/class/641/about
RDF clients get redirected to:http://dewey.info/class/641/about.rdf
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But the DDC has a long complex historyWhat language did you want?
http://dewey.info/class/641/about.enhttp://dewey.info/class/641/about.fr
What edition did you want?http://dewey.info/class/641/e22/abouthttp://dewey.info/class/641/e23/about
In what language?http://dewey.info/class/641/e22/about.en
In what format?
http://dewey.info/class/641/e22/about.en.htmlhttp://dewey.info/class/641/e22/about.en.rdf
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Virtual International Authority File: VIAFIt is blissfully simple compared to Dewey!
http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679Generates a 303 redirect to:
http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679/Where content negotiation will get you either:
http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679/viaf.html http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679/viaf.xml http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679/viaf.rss http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679/viaf.rdf http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679/marc21.xml http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679/unimarc.xml
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Elegant (but incomplete) Data
<rdf:RDF><rdf:Description
rdf:about="http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679"><rdf:type rdf:resource=
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person"/><rdf:type rdf:resource="http://RDVocab.info/uri/schema/FRBRentitiesRDA/Person"/><foaf:name>Mozziconacci, Jean-Francois</foaf:name></rdf:Description>
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<skos:Concept rdf:about="http://viaf.org/viaf/ sourceID/BNF%7C12153518#skos:Concept">
<skos:inScheme rdf:resource="http://viaf.org/ authorityScheme/BNF"/>
<skos:prefLabel>Mozziconacci, Jean-Francois</skos:prefLabel>
<foaf:focus rdf:resource="http://viaf.org/viaf/12345679"/>
</skos:Concept>
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FAST — Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, subject headingsAnother elegant URI pattern http://tspilot.oclc.org/fast/fst01234567 http://tspilot.oclc.org/fast/fst01234567.json http://tspilot.oclc.org/fast/fst01234567.mads
http://tspilot.oclc.org/fast/fst01234567.marcxml http://tspilot.oclc.org/fast/fst01234567.skos http://tspilot.oclc.org/fast/fst01234567.zthes
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But, a work in progress
•No RDF (but existing SKOS shows it won’t be hard)
•Camped on the tspilot.oclc.org domain
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Not WorldCat Identities
http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n79-91588
Why not?Limited product development resourcesNo customer demand
What do you mean no customer demand?!?!Our library customers prefer MARC or simple
XMLinstead of RDF
The potential consumers who want Identities as
linked data expect to get it for free
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W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group•Andy Houghton•Tod Matola•Michael Panzer• Jeff Young
The mission of the group is to help increase global interoperability of library data on the Web, by bringing together people involved in Semantic Web activities—focusing on Linked Data—in the library community and beyond
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/
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Open Source Infrastructure
Our VIAF interface technology is available as Open Source at http://code.google.com/p/oclcsrw/
It provides the ability to expose records stored in Lucene (or a similar database) as Linked Data
Other technologies (such as D2R) are available for data in relational databases
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Turning Content into Links
If Linked Data is about links, then how do you turn your content into links?
Google Refine and the ReconciliationServiceAPIRefine takes spreadsheets of data andsupplements that data with links
It uses the ReconciliationServiceAPI to query a
database and get back links
Think of OpenURL for the Linked Data world
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Poised for success
OCLC has the data, the infrastructure and the knowledge to participate in the Linked Data world.