Jonathan, I think we can point to some interesting benefits. If you take
a look at what the BBC has done with their Wildlife site [1] and then
look at the new FAO catalog [2] you can see how a page can be enhanced
with useful data based on URIs in the bibliographic records. Imagine
being able to add the short author bio from Wikipedia to a record
display. etc. etc. [3] Or linking from a person as subject to the New
York times data page for that person. [4]
Now, I know that your reply will be: but only if the vendors do it.
Well, godammnit, we sure as hell can't wait for them - they are
followers, not leaders. (And maybe this will give a boost to OS catalogs
that don't have to wait for the unwieldy barge of library systems to
make its change of direction.)
Note also that linked data is already happening in libraries in Europe,
and the entire Europeana and DPLA are being developed as LD databases.
This isn't some far out future nuttiness. We're actually running behind.
kc
[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/BBC/
[2] Info: http://aims.fao.org/agris; search interface:
http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/index.do
[3] try this out in: https://apps.facebook.com/WorldCat/
[4] http://data.nytimes.com/N20483401082089183163 (R. Nixon) which links
to page with a huge list of articles
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/richard_milhous_nixon/index.html
On 4/30/14, 11:13 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
If you want libraries to spend money on adding URI's to their data,
there is going to need to be some clear benefit they get from doing it
-- and it needs to be a pretty near-term benefit, not "Well, some day
all these awesome things might happen, because linked data."
On 4/30/14 1:34 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
Thanks, Richard. I ask because it's one of the most common questions
that I get -- often about WorldCat, but in general about any source of
URIs -- "How do I connect my data (text forms) to their URIs?" And these
questions usually come from library or archive projects with little or
no programming staff. So it seems like we need to be able to answer that
question so that people can get linked up. In fact, it seems to me that
the most pressing need right now is an easy way (or one that someone
else can do for you at a reasonable cost) to connect the text string
"identifiers" that we have to URIs. I envision something like what we
went through when we moved from AACR name forms to AACR2 name forms, and
libraries were able to send their MARC records to a service that
returned the records with the new name form. In this case, though, such
a service would return the data with the appropriate URIs added. (In the
case of MARC, in the $0 subfield.)
It's great that the "big guys" like LC and OCLC are providing URIs for
resources. But at the moment I feel like it's grapes dangling just
beyond the reach of the folks we want to connect to. Any ideas on how to
make this easy are welcome. And I do think that there's great potential
for an enterprising start-up to provide an affordable service for
libraries and archives. Of course, an open source "pass in your data in
x or y format and we'll return it with URIs embedded" would be great,
but I think it would be reasonable to charge for such a service.
kc
On 4/30/14, 9:59 AM, Richard Wallis wrote:
To unpack the several questions lurking in Karen’s question.
As to being able to use the WorldCat Works data/identifiers there is no
difference between a or b - it is ODC-BY licensed data.
Getting a Work URI may be easier for a) as they should be able to
identify
the OCLC Number and hence use the linked data from it’s URI <
http://worldcat.org/oclc/{ocn}> to pick up the link to it’s work.
Tools such as xISBN <http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/doc/api.htm>
can
step you towards identifier lookups and are openly available for low
volume
usage.
Citation lookup is more a bib lookup feature, that you could get an
OCLC
Number from. One of colleagues may be helpful on the particulars of
this.
Apologies for being WorldCat specific, but Karen did ask.
~Richard.
On 30 April 2014 17:15, Karen Coyle <li...@kcoyle.net> wrote:
My question has to do with discoverability. Let's say that I have a
bibliographic database and I want to add the OCLC work identifiers to
it.
Obviously I don't want to do it by hand. I might have ISBNs, but in
some
cases I will have a regular author/title-type citation.
and let's say that I am asking this for two different institutions:
a) is an OCLC member institution
b) is not
Thanks,
kc
On 4/30/14, 8:47 AM, Dan Scott wrote:
On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Roy Tennant <roytenn...@gmail.com>
wrote:
This has now instead become a reasonable recommendation
concerning ODC-BY licensing [3] but the confusion and uncertainty
about which records an OCLC member may redistribute remains.
[3] http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/2012/201248.en.html
Allow me to try to put this confusion and uncertainty to rest
once and
for
all:
ALL THE THINGS. ALL.
At least as far as we are concerned. I think it's well past time to
put
the
past in the past.
That's great, Roy. That's a *lot* simpler than parsing the
recommendations, WCRR, community norms, and such at [A, B] :)
Meanwhile, we have just put nearly 200 million works records up as
linked
open data. [1], [2], [3]. If that doesn't rock the library open
linked
data
world, then no one is paying attention.
Roy
[1] http://oclc.org/en-US/news/releases/2014/201414dublin.html
[2]
http://dataliberate.com/2014/04/worldcat-works-197-million-
nuggets-of-linked-data/
[3] http://hangingtogether.org/?p=3811
Yes, that is really awesome. But Laura was asking about barriers to
open metadata, so damn you for going off-topic with PR around a lack
of barriers to some metadata (which, for those who have not looked
yet, have a nice ODC-BY licensing statement at the bottom of a given
Works page) :)
A. http://oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use.en.html
B. http://oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use/data-
licensing/questions.en.html
--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
