a talk given in Tokyo, Japan in December 2010.

1. Linking
Library Data
on the Web
Daniel Chudnov - dchud @ umich.edu
Tokyo, Japan - December 8 2010

2. these slides
are my opinion
not my employer’s

3. • making links
• weaving links
into a fabric
• proxying and
caching links

4. making links
• we have been building the
web for about 20 years
• we constantly improve
the web
• we constantly improve
how we build the web
• we still have a ways to go

5. Rembrandt at
artic.edu
authority record at OCLC

6. Rembrandt in linkypedia

7. Rembrandt from linkypedia

8. Picasso: name variants, search links

9. Picasso from more than linkypedia

10. a fragile web
• just using search link patterns is
brittle
• wikipedia, google, and bing do
better than we do at connecting
resources across institutions
• we have more content that isn’t
easy to find
• how can we improve this?

11. proxy resource URIs
• commit to a stable resource
URI for each concept/name for
each institution
• use that URI to show your own
links to your own holdings
• use that URI to find external
links to your holdings
• use that URI to show external
links to related holdings

12. proxy resource URIs
• a “home page” for each
concept at each of our sites
• threads together diverse
content at each of our sites
• makes it easier to weave
threads of content from
diverse sites together

13. Wikipedia
NDLSH

14. caching concepts
• concept resource URIs
should indicate “same as”
status with major
concept sources
• these URIs should also
publish local caches of
the “main” concept
source data

15. caching concepts
• supports efficient
local processing
• adds stability when
remote sites go down
• we often do this in
our ILS already

16. strengthening meaning
• can apply to registries as well
as catalogs, repositories, exhibit
sites, reference resources
• makes concepts and their
meaning a more prominent
part of our own sites and the
web we are building as a whole

17. thank you!
@dchud
dchud @ umich.edu
onebiglibrary.net