Open for Reuse: Library data and mashups

Open for reuse:
library data and mashups
Owen Stephens
CILIP Cymru 2012 Conference

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

an initiative to improve
resource discovery by
establishing a clear set of
principles and practices
for the publication and
aggregation of open,
reusable, metadata

http://discovery.ac.uk

A lot of my thinking in this area informed by work I’ve done with the UK Discovery project,
although I’m not here directly representing the project, and views my own!

What is Discovery? - the one liner:

“an initiative to improve resource discovery by establishing a clear set of principles and
practices for the publication and aggregation of open, reusable, metadata”

RDTF - The ‘Resource Discovery Task Force’ – set up by JISC and RLUK (Research Libraries UK) to
“discuss what needs to be provided to help people discover and access items from Higher Education
Libraries, Museums and Archives throughout the UK. “ (http://rdtf.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2009/06/26/hello-
world-2/ )
Result was a ‘Vision’ document, which set out a strategy of useful data aggregations built on
“open metadata about institutional collections”

Justin Hampton (originally posted on http://www.dangermousesite.com/)
What is a mashup? “a digital media file containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video, and animation, which recombines and modifies
existing digital works to create a derivative work.”

For me - creativity meets technology. While I think it is arguable that technology is not an essential part of this, I believe it is the
ease with which digital content can be repurposed
latter not essential but enables?

Probably earliest ʻmashupsʼ were musical (term coined around 2001 as far as I can tell) - the Grey Album being a high profile example (2004)
- remixing JayZeeʼs Black Album with samples from the Beatles White Album.
With the increasing availability of video in digital form, as well as ways to share the results easily (i.e. YouTube), video mashups also became
common

However the mashups Iʼll be talking about today mashup not music or video, but information

http://www.housingmaps.com/

So much data has a geographic aspect - when you combine that with map data, powerful way to
visualise things
Google Maps has clearly led the way here, but with the Ordnance Survey opening up their data, this
opens new opportunities in the UK

Powered by craigslist and Google Maps
(this site is in no way afﬁliated with craigslist or Google)

http://www.housingmaps.com/

So much data has a geographic aspect - when you combine that with map data, powerful way to
visualise things
Google Maps has clearly led the way here, but with the Ordnance Survey opening up their data, this
opens new opportunities in the UK

ra ry
L ib
da ta
“Life is like a box of chocolates”


Well, sort of, sometimes, if the box is locked, hidden and/or without a guide to what’s inside

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/withassociates

What does ‘open’ mean?
Not a simple binary open/closed... but rather a continuum
Amount of friction...
Things that create friction:
Explicit restrictions
Uncertainty about possible restrictions
Unusual/Unfamiliar interfaces (Z39.50 anyone?)
Lack of information on data and where it is available

Formats - Paul Walk argues we need a ’richer understanding of openness’ which encompasses
not just permissive licensing but, more broadly, the ease with which data can be used, taking
into consideration aspects such as format and access mechanisms

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/25414047@N00/5656079620/

Friction can be good. What is not good is thoughtlessly or accidentally introducing friction.

Frictionless means losing control (over the data) - that’s ok if that’s what you want. Can
combine approaches by making your interface the easiest to use (Kasabi and other data
marketplace)

Going to talk about three aspects today:

Licensing of data

Discovering data

Accessing data

Openly Licensed


Licenses, OBD
©
Explicit restrictions
Uncertainty about possible restrictions

Problems with anything beyond PDDL and CC0 - does anyone own the metadata? Conﬂicting
legal advice and decisions

Do you have database rights?

The Problem of the Yellow Milkmaid

“people simply didn’t believe the
postcards in our museum shop were
showing the original painting”
http://pro.europeana.eu/documents/858566/2cbf1f78-e036-4088-af25-94684ff90dc5

Examples of ‘open’, and friction (some friction is OK?)

Europeana

BNB - originally released with an “NC” license. Moved quickly to CC0

Problems with NC

Repositories - problems of understanding what is allowed. Not common not machine
readable. Don’t really understand what the repo want to achieve (what is it they want to
stop?)

http://www.data.gov/

US Government produced catalogue of available data at data.gov

http://data.gov.uk/

UK Government data.gov.uk

http://data.open.ac.uk

Now other organisations doing similar - Universities like data.open.ac.uk (and others)

http://opendata.warwickshire.gov.uk

Local Government - eg Warwickshire


http://id.loc.gov

http://bnb.data.bl.uk

http://bnb.data.bl.uk

http://openmetadata.lib.harvard.edu/

http://data.bnf.fr/

http://www.dnb.de/DE/Service/DigitaleDienste/
LinkedData/linkeddata.html

http://datos.bne.es

http://librisbloggen.kb.se/2011/09/21/swedish-
national-bibliography-and-authority-data-
released-with-open-license/

http://viaf.org/viaf/data/

http://www.amazon.co.uk

Not necessarily about open licensing - but being clear about T&C

Amazon, Twitter, Guardian - not open, but still used. Not always the only factor. Amazon
have T&C that dictate ‘purpose’ and mandate linking to Amazon - deliberate friction that has
not prevented massive uptake of the API

Openly Accessible

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/tawheedmanzoor/

Unusual/Unfamiliar interfaces (Z39.50 anyone?)

Formats
APIs

APIs are not experimental: More than half of all the traffic to major companies like Twitter
and eBay come through APIs (http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2011/12/15/
explaining-the-api-revolution-to-your-ceo/)

Allegedly Jeff Bezos threatened to ﬁre anyone who didn’t offer APIs to content/assets they
were responsible for

“It’s the API designer’s
job to make life easy for
developers”

http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2012/03/api-
design-is-ui-for-developers/


http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2012/03/api-design-is-ui-for-developers/

It’s the API designer’s job to make life easy for developers

Standards no-one has heard of
One-way (publication not interaction)

Z39.50 does not make life easier!

Openly Discoverable

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/halighalie/

Lack of information on data and where it is available

Schema.org
CKAN/Datahub
getthedata

http://www.ﬂickr.com/


This is not an excuse to show a picture of my two gorgeous children, but to show how Flickr
integrates with my photo management system


There is an API, but you wouldn’t know, unless you are ‘in the know’


Not just about on your site - also advertise elsewhere - e.g. http://thedatahub.org/


.... engage with those looking for your data - e.g. http://getthedata.org

http://libraryhack.org

Australian initiative to encourage Library mashups - http://libraryhack.org/


We don’t tell anyone about them
Need more on Schema.org? Illustration of rich snippets

?
What is the outcome of ‘open’?
Rufus Pollock said “The coolest thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else”
- but is this true?

“internal use of APIs is going to have the largest impact
for most businesses”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2011/12/15/
explaining-the-api-revolution-to-your-ceo


“We built APIs to simplify internal apps, open data is just a
happy fallout.”
http://twitter.com/#!/jacksonj04/status/
183123086491660289


http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/qld/default.aspx

Libraryhack entry ‘Queensland Churches’
http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/qld/default.aspx

Lewis Wagner, http://www.lewiswagner.me/

What happens? My local council (Warwickshire) released a number of data sets and ran a
competition to encourage local developers to build applications on top of this data. One set of
data with a list of new books in the library - and a local developer (nothing to do with
libraries) built this - shows books, covers (from Amazon) and links to previews in Google
books. This WON the competition.

Not the only example. Rewired State is an organisation which “runs hackdays where
developers show government what is possible”, recently ran a ‘Youth’ event - and one of the
winners was based around integrating library services into Facebook

Believe it or not Library Data is SEXY!

http://www.version1.europeana.eu/web/api/hack4europe

Competitions and events to encourage exploitation suggest that skills and enthusiasm exist
to innovate with open data:

Discovery developer competition

Europeana ‘Hack day’ - incredible outcomes
Might question if these would happen without ‘priming’ - manipulating the market

Europeana Hackday example - take photo of picture/art, brings back data from Europeana

http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2011/07/compose-yourself/

iTunes App Store

Cambridge iPhone app suggests even outside this there is appetite
Discovery will be doing more to demonstrate what can be built...

GIST, State University of New York College at Geneseo

Not just about pretty things for library customers though
The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) is a customizable set of tools and workﬂows that will enhance
interlibrary loan and just-in-time acquisitions services; purchase request processing; and cooperative
collection development efforts.
Developed at the State University of New York College at Geneseo
Brings together disparate information sources with key data, such as: uniqueness; free online sources;
reviews and rankings; and purchasing options and prices


Have a look at http://blog.ouseful.info/2011/04/04/just-do-it-yourself-my-uksg-
presentation/ or basically the whole of http://blog.ouseful.info for useful tips and tricks for
getting started (and getting more complex) with mashups. Suggest UKSG presentation good
starting place


How can we find the resource to do this type of innovation?

Doesn’t have to be ££££

Barcamps and Unconferences

The final push to do something was an event organised by Mike Ellis - previously at the Science
Museum, now at Eduserve - the ‘Mashed Museums’ event. So I shamelessly reappropriated the name
and so...

Mashed Libraries

After I got back from ALA, I wrote a speculative post for my blog suggesting the idea, and got a really
enthusiastic response. Luckily I was at a meeting with Paul Walk from UKOLN that same week, and he
encouraged me to press ahead and offered support from UKOLN to make the first event happen.

I setup a ning to enable discussions and get some idea of who might come along and what they’d like to see
on the day.
We got a venue provided for free (by David Flanders, then at Birkbeck, now at JISC) , the catering costs
covered by UKOLN, and speakers who all gave their time for free - and about 30 people came along.

There were problems (not enough power, and me failing to organise vegan options on the catering) - but
overall it was fun, and the response was positive, and Dave Pattern quickly volunteered to run a 2nd event in
Huddersfield - Mash Oop North. This was quickly followed by Middlemash at Birmingham City University in
the same year, followed by ‘Liver and Mash’ (Liverpool). The next event is at the end of this month (MashSpa
in Bath - still time to sign up), and currently Haggis and Mash in Edinburgh in January 2011 being planned,
with a further one being hosted at the University of Lincoln at some point in 2011

For me as much as the events is the ongoing sense of community - I think we are starting to build a
community of tech interested and able librarians - and others (not just about librarians!) - twitter key for
me.


Mashedlibrary.com

http://www.mashedlibrary.com


Mashedlibrary.com

Step 1: Find a venue, get
a date


Organising a Mashed Library event is simple. 6 Steps described here, see also http://
www.mashedlibrary.com/wiki-content/organise-a-mashed-library-event/

Step 1: Find a venue, get
a date
(this gives you a deadline!)


Organising a Mashed Library event is simple. 6 Steps described here, see also http://
www.mashedlibrary.com/wiki-content/organise-a-mashed-library-event/

Step 2: Tell people


Step 2: Tell people
(twitter, mailing lists, blogs,
mashedlibrary.com, facebook, etc.)


Step 3: Find speakers


Step 3: Find speakers
(if you want)


Step 4: Look for
sponsorship


Don’t need much money, best sponsorship may be getting the venue donated!

Step 4: Look for
sponsorship
(companies, publishers, data providers, Universities, etc.)


Don’t need much money, best sponsorship may be getting the venue donated!

Step 5: Catering


Cake is very important

Step 5: Catering
(but can tell people to bring their own, or have near/in a
cafe if you want)


Cake is very important

Step 6: Let people
register


Charging? Maybe good to have nominal charge - makes people commit. But not necessary.

Step 6: Let people
register
(and pay if you are charging)


Charging? Maybe good to have nominal charge - makes people commit. But not necessary.

What’s the worst that can happen?



Remember - Doesn’t have to be a big all day event - DMU MashedLibrary - lunchtime
sessions run at De Montford University in Leicester

http://www.mashcat.info/


?

Actions
• Consider what ‘friction’ there is for others
wishing to use your data
• Start to exploit the APIs for your own
purposes
• Engage with developers - ask them what
they want, and ﬁnd out what they can do
• Organise a mashed library event

What ‘friction’ is there in your systems around re-use? Is it deliberate or accidental? Could it
be useful to introduce some friction?

Are you using your own APIs? How could these already help your work?

Where are the developers - do you actively engage with them? Do you promote your APIs?

Eat chocolate;
Share chocolate


Thank you
http://ostephens.com
@ostephens


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