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Introducing
Linked Data
ISD Spotlight
Presented by Alison
Hitchens
2013
2
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)
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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)
From Wikipedia linked data page
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Human-readable vs. machineactionable*
 Look
at this Wikipedia page and tell me
what you know about Margaret Atwood
from looking at the page
*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.
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The classic web
Margaret
Atwood
Wikipedia
resource
Click on link
text or URL
URL
Inspired by a slide by Eric Miller
Margaret
Atwood
homepage
resource
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A linked data web
Alison’s
guide to
Margaret
Atwood
person
Is subject of
Margaret
Atwood
Is type of
Has homepage
Undefined
URL link
http://margaret
atwood.ca/
Inspired by a semantic web
slide by Eric Miller
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Use Structured Data
Textual data
Currency
Date
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Identify your data
 This
resource is a person
 Name: “Margaret Atwood”
 Birth date: 19391118
 Place of birth: Ottawa, Ontario
 Occupation: novelist
 Occupation: poet
 Author of: “The Handmaid’s Tale”
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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 VIAF
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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 identifier
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The famous linked data cloud
 The
linked data cloud shows the
connections between datasets on the
web
Excerpt from: “Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch.
http://lod-cloud.net/”
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Connect your data
 This

resource is a person
Use class of persons from the Friend of a
Friend (FOAF)ontology
 Place

of birth: Ottawa, Ontario
Could link to Geonames
 Occupation:

Could link to LCSH term
 Author

novelist
of: “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Could link to The Open Library page
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Library Use Cases*
 Enrich
our bibliographic data
 Enrich our authority data
 Align subject vocabularies
 Share our unique collections and
information
*for our next linked data session!
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Some technical stuff*
 Ideally
everything has a uniform resource
identifier (URI) e.g. http://viaf.org/viaf/109322990
 Data is modeled using Resource
Description Framework (RDF)
 Use a common format such as Extensible
Markup Language (XML)
*for our next linked data session!
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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
http://www.metapress.com.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/content/g212v1
783607/ (subscription required)
Harper, Corey. Library linked data: tuning library metadata for the
semantic web. An ALCTS webcast, March 16. 2011. access at
http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/cat/0316
11 (open access)
Berners-Lee, Tim. The next web. A TED talk, February 2009. access at
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html
(open access)
Heath, Tom and Christian Bizer (2011) Linked Data: Evolving the
Web into a Global Data Space. 1st ed. Morgan & Claypool, 2011.
(Synthesis Lectures on the Semantic Web: Theory and Technology,
1:1) http://linkeddatabook.com/editions/1.0/ (open access)
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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
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Thanks!
Alison Hitchens
Cataloguing & Metadata Librarian
University of Waterloo Library
[email protected]
Introducing Linked Data