Linked Data for Cultural Heritage

Ed Jones editor Michele Seikel editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Facet Publishing

Published:10th Oct '16

Should be back in stock very soon

Linked Data for Cultural Heritage cover

Linked data is now essential for sharing collections on the open web. Linked Data for Cultural Heritage gathers a stellar list of contributors to help readers understand linked data concepts by examining practice and projects based in libraries, archives, and museums.

Linked open data remains very much a work in progress, and much of the progress has taken place within the domain of the cultural heritage institutions: libraries, archives, and museums. There is no question that the structure of linked data, and the machine inferencing it supports, shows great promise for discoverability. What will be the ‘killer app’ that breaks linked open data out to the wider world and accelerates its uptake? Perhaps it will be a project described in this volume.

Content covered includes:

  • a very simple description of linked data, summing up its promises and challenges
  • a survey of the use of linked data in significant projects across the cultural heritage domain, including Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
  • practical discussion of migrating a catalogue from a MARC environment to one of linked data and the possibilities that open up in terms of the broader scholarly community
  • reviewing and reimagining library thesauri, metadata schemas, and information discovery, to look at how controlled vocabularies integrate library practice with linked data
  • an examination of the role of authority control, identifiers and vocabularies, including use of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the SPARQL query language
  • Carol Jean Godby describes OCLC’s experiments with Schema.org as the foundation for a model of library resource description expressed as linked data
  • the development of the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME) data model and a description of the fundamental differences between MARC and BIBFRAME.

This survey of the cultural heritage linked data landscape will be a key resource for metadata practitioners and researchers within all cultural heritage contexts and all students and academics within the information science and digital humanities fields.

What sets Linked Data for Cultural Heritage apart from other books on library linked data is the emphasis on cultural collections and their datasets—metadata that includes information about people, places, provenance, and relationships to other cultural collections ...Linked Data for Cultural Heritage is an effective, fresh commentary on the current uses of library linked data and its possible future.

* Technicalities *

Given that the overview of linked data presented here is generally accessible to those at all levels, I think that the volume achieves its objectives of being a resource for students and practitioners wishing to learn more about practical implementations and the workings of linked data models.

-- Christopher Colwell * Archives and Manuscripts *

Accessible to those who are following the library linked data conversation for the first time, but not a low-level introduction, either, chapters from this thoughtful compilation will be equally at home on the syllabus of an library and information science graduate course as on the reading list of a professional learning community of metadata, systems, and digital scholarship librarians.

-- Chelcie Juliet Rowell * Technical Services Quarterly *

This refreshing volume cuts through much of the hype about linked data with clear-eyed discussions of the components that make up the semantic web, and delves into several current ongoing projects and implementations. The authors acknowledge that there are many challenges and that the work is still beginning. Though at first glance the work appears rather daunting and dense, on closer inspection it proves well-written and fascinating in its accounts of the semantic web's components. Highly recommended for those wishing further acquaintance with linked data, as well as others who may be well-versed in the topic.

-- Don Todaro * Against the Gra

ISBN: 9781783301621

Dimensions: 229mm x 155mm x 9mm

Weight: 107g

160 pages