Slides from talk at NYPL Labs Brown Bag, July 12, 2011.

1. Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and
Museums
Jon Voss – July 12, 2011 – NYPL Labs

2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pict_u_re/2372235999
Linked Open Data
in
Libraries, Archives & Museums
New York Public Library @jonvoss
July 12, 2011
Jon Voss
Historypin Strategic Partnerships Director
jon.voss@wearewhatwedo.org

3. Welcome
• Goal: a solid, basic, conceptual understanding of Linked
Open Data
• A chance to collaborate with others, share knowledge,
expertise, perspective; explore ideas

4. Linked Open Data in Cultural Context
• It’s not just Libraries, • http://
Archives & Museums mashupbreakdown.com/
• Linked Open Data has
evolved in the cultural
context of shared
information, music, movies
• From rock to rap to hip-hop
to mashups
• Changing expectations from
audiences, curators,
technologists

5. History & Mashup Culture
+
2010 National Archives Photo Contest
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37377809@N00/5304492185/in/pool-1633053@N21/

6. 2009
Linked
Open
Data
photos by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE, TED

7. Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/

9. LODLAM is a Growing Movement
• in its infancy, but picking up steam
• it requires experimentation
• small, niche, domain-specific implementations
• use cases, reasons for content providers to get excited about
contributing

10. LODLAM is a product of our increasingly
connected culture.
• it’s an unfolding story, but it’s awn...
• first funded projects in the US exploring Linked Open Data in the
humanities now underway: http://lod-lam.net
• June 2-3, 100 people gathered from around the world to
forward LODLAM in the next year

11. LODLAM is a product of our increasingly
connected culture.
• and that’s just the beginning...
Linked Open Data

12. Linked
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL6048721W/Linked

13. Going from Tables to Graphs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasjwoods-com/2264301251

14. Going from Tables to Graphs
• nodes and links in a graph

15. Going from Tables to Graphs
• As computing power increases, the ability to build
more and more complex graphs becomes a reality.
• Human vs. Machine readable
msulibraries lookbackmaps
msulibraries internetarchive
msulibraries librarycongress
lookbackmaps internetarchive
internetarchive librarycongress

16. Introducing Triples
Nodes & Links
follows
jonvoss NYPL_Labs
• Quite simply: Subject, Predicate, Object
• gives us the ability to describe entities in a way that is
machine readable

17. What do we know about the person: Ed
Summers (aside from the fact that he
rocks)?
Bio: Hacker for libraries, digital archaeologist, pragmatist.
bio
knows
depiction of
knows
http://inkdroid.org/ehs.rdf

18. Triples for machines
• triples can be serialized in many different ways,
including Resource Description
Framework, RDF/XML, RDFa, N3, Turtle, etc,
but they all describe things in the
<subject><predicate><object> format.
• of course, we need to be consistent and
predictable for machines to understand us.

19. • we’re almost ready to talk to machines
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oface/3306994117/

20. http://inkdroid.org/ehs.rdf

21. • consider graph demo: http://civilwardata150.net
• Civil War vocabulary, or a way to link and traverse
across datasets
• Regiments, battles, Freebase military schema
• Building apps
• How tools like Simile/Exhibit can use Linked
Data in coordination with Freebase (Conflict
History: http://conflicthistory.com/#/period/

25. Now that we can see the code...
• Books
• Photos
• Information

28. Tim Berners-Lee’s 4 rules of Linked Data
• Use URIs as names for things
• Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those
names.
• When someone looks up a URI, provide useful
information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL)
• Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover
more things.
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

29. Tim Berners-Lee: 5 Stars of Linked Data
• More thanks to Ed Summers: http://inkdroid.org/
journal/2010/06/04/the-5-stars-of-open-linked-
data/
• This is NOT all or nothing

30. A cautionary word about vocabularies
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillygwailo/272291003/

31. A cautionary word about vocabularies
• Caution: what libraries call vocabularies is not
necessarily what we mean...
• This is how we organize information and
triangulate the data we’re looking for
• How we agree on predicates
• Ontologies like FOAF, OWL, http://id.loc.gov/,
VIAF, etc.

32. In summary Linked
• Graphs
• Human AND Machine readable
• Vocabulary, agreed terms for organizing info
• Triples, RDF

33. The “Open” part of Linked
Open Data Open
• Considerations and ramifications
• Difference between shared, published, open
• Legal tools
• Precedents/Examples

34. Expose yourself, be vulnerable
• This is the major cultural shift, the tide rising
amongst institutions, that data wants to be free in
a culture economy.
• There is value in sharing
• It does require a leap of faith, but risks and
rewards should be carefully considered and
calculated
• Excellent resource: JISC Open Bibliographic Data
Guide http://obd.jisc.ac.uk/

35. What will happen to your data?
• If you want people to do something with your
data/metadata, you have to put it out there
• But once you do, it’s [mostly] out of your control.
Yet it can be a part of something much greater
than any of the component parts
• Roots and Wings
• Lessig: Humility of the Web

36. What will happen to your data?
• working with
Open Data
from NOAA
at wherecamp
2011.
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/history/CivilWar/

37. Metadata vs. data, assets, digital
surrogates
• A key conceptual shift with Open Data is
looking at metadata and data as two separate
things, that can have different licensing and
permissions

38. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/item/2003653763/

39. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003653763/marc/

40. What are the legal tools for
publishing Open Data?

41. Legal Tools
• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
• http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/
Open Data Published Data
CC-BY CC-BY-NC-ND
CC0
CC-BY-NC
Public Domain Mark
CC-BY-ND
Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)
CC-BY-SA
Attribution License (ODC-By)
Open Database License (ODC-ODbL) CC-BY-NC-SA

42. Concerns and Limitations
• There is some argument about whether or not
metadata can be protected under copyright at all.
Copyright protects a creative work, and some
argue that metadata is scientific fact, rather than
creative work.
• Databases are protected differently in the EU and
US, for example.
• Public Domain and No Known Copyright...
• Issuing blanket copyright over all works on a
website, even though some may be in the public
domain

43. Examples and precedents
• Bibliographic data:
• British Library (CC0), University of Michigan
(CC0), Stanford (CC-BY) have published large,
raw datasets of bibliographic data they have
created (being careful not to publish OCLC or
other vendor controlled or licensed metadata)

44. Examples and precedents
• Civil War Data 150
• Metadata from contributing federal
institutions are largely considered to be Public
Domain.
• State, local, university & individual researchers
are considering policies for metadata
publishing on a case by case basis.

45. Examples and precedents
http://googleancientplaces.wordpress.com/public-domain/

46. Sciences leading the way vs. Humanities
• In the sciences, there have been a lot of advances
in the realm of Open Data, which will provide
models for humanities research as well
• Nano Publishing: the idea of publishing
datasets separately from research findings, so
that it can more easily be built upon and
integrated into other datasets. Several scientific
journals have already started this.
• Federally funded medical research must have a
data management plan and some funders are
requiring that data be published separately from
analysis and findings as Open Data

47. In summary Open
• put it out there...
• published, shared, and/or open
• tools
• metadata vs. assets

48. Google Refine
• A tool for large datasets, cleaning and reconciling
• http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/
• Extremely powerful, though scripting language has
not yet been very well documented.
• Enables you to reconcile data against the 20 million
+ known entities in Freebase

49. What Would You Do?
• Conceptualizing domains, Linked Open
Data projects, collaborations, etc

50. Join the LODLAM movement
• #lodlam hashtag on Twitter
• http://groups.google.com/group/lod-lam
• http://lod-lam.net proceedings online and
on the road for the next year at various
annual meetings and conferences
• Contribute!

51. Thanks
@NYPL_Labs Team
@edsu & crew
Sloan Foundation, NEH, Internet Archive
Historypin
& all y’all.