Category: Development

Content-Negotiation for WorldCat

Posted on by Richard Wallis

I am pleased to share with you a small but significant step on the Linked Data journey for WorldCat and the exposure of data from OCLC. Content-negotiation has been implemented for the publication of Linked Data for WorldCat resources. For those immersed in the publication and consumption of Linked Data, there is little more to say.  However I suspect there are a significant number of folks reading this who are wondering what the heck I am going on about.  It is a little bit techie but I will try to keep it as simple as possible. Back last year, a …

Putting Linked Data on the Map

Posted on by Richard Wallis

Show me an example of the effective publishing of Linked Data – That, or a variation of it, must be the request I receive more than most when talking to those considering making their own resources available as Linked Data, either in their enterprise, or on the wider web. Ordnance Survey have built such an example.

From Records to a Web of Library Data – Pt2 Hubs of Authority

Posted on by Richard Wallis

As is often the way, you start a post without realising that it is part of a series of posts – as with the first in this series.  That one – Entification, and the next in the series – Beacons of Availability, together map out a journey that I believe the library community is undertaking as it evolves from a record based system of cataloguing items towards embracing distributed open linked data principles to connect users with the resources they seek.  Although grounded in much of the theory and practice I promote and engage with, in my role as Technology …

From Records to a Web of Library Data – Pt1 Entification

Posted on by Richard Wallis

The phrase ‘getting library data into a linked data form’ hides multitude of issues. There are some obvious steps such as holding and/or outputting the data in RDF, providing resources with permanent URIs, etc. However, deriving useful library linked data from a source, such as a Marc record, requires far more than giving it a URI and encoding what you know, unchanged, as RDF triples.

OCLC WorldCat Linked Data Release – Significant In Many Ways

Posted on by Richard Wallis

Typical!  Since joining OCLC as Technology Evangelist, I have been preparing myself to be one of the first to blog about the release of linked data describing the hundreds of millions of bibliographic items in WorldCat.org. So where am I when the press release hits the net?  35,000 feet above the North Atlantic heading for LAX, that’s where – life just isn’t fair. By the time I am checked in to my Anahiem hotel, ready for the ALA Conference, this will be old news.  Nevertheless it is significant news, significant in many ways. OCLC have been at the leading edge …

Is Linked Data DIY a Good Idea?

Posted on by Richard Wallis

Most Semantic Web and Linked Data enthusiasts will tell you that Linked Data is not rocket science, and it is not.  They will tell you that RDF is one of the simplest data forms for describing things, and they are right.  They will tell you that adopting Linked Data makes merging disparate datasets much easier to do, and it does. They will say that publishing persistent globally addressable URIs (identifiers) for your things and concepts will make it easier for others to reference and share them, it will.  They will tell you that it will enable you to add value …

A Data 7th Wave Approaching

Posted on by Richard Wallis

I believe Data, or more precisely changes in how we create, consume, and interact with data, has the potential to deliver a seventh wave impact. With the advent of many data associated advances, variously labelled Big Data, Social Networking, Open Data, Cloud Services, Linked Data, Microformats, Microdata, Semantic Web, Enterprise Data, it is now venturing beyond those closed systems into the wider world. It is precisely because these trends have been around for a while, and are starting to mature and influence each other, that they are building to form something really significant.

Step Back from the XML – RDF Modelling

Posted on by Richard Wallis

I have watched many flounder when they first try to get their head around describing the things they already know in this new Linked Data format, RDF. Just like moving house, we initially grasp for the familiar and that might not always be helpful. This is is where stepping back from the XML is a good idea. XML is only one encoding/transmission format for RDF