Open Data – Page 2 – Data Liberate

Forming Consensus on Schema.org for Libraries and More

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Richard Wallis

Back in September I formed a W3C Group – Schema Bib Extend. To quote an old friend of mine “Why did you go and do that then?” Well, as I have mentioned before Schema.org has become a bit of a success story for structured data on the web. I would have no hesitation in recommending it as a starting point for anyone, in any sector, wanting to share structured data on the web. This is what OCLC did in the initial exercise to publish the 270+ million resources in WorldCat.org as Linked Data. At the same time, I believe that …

Get Yourself a Linked Data Piece of WorldCat to Play With

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Richard Wallis

You may remember my frustration a couple of months ago, at being in the air when OCLC announced the addition of Schema.org marked up Linked Data to all resources in WorldCat.org. Those of you who attended the OCLC Linked Data Round Table at IFLA 2012 in Helsinki yesterday, will know that I got my own back on the folks who publish the press releases at OCLC, by announcing the next WorldCat step along the Linked Data road whilst they were still in bed. The Round Table was an excellent very interactive session with Neil Wilson from the British Library, Emmanuelle Bermes from Centre …

OCLC WorldCat Linked Data Release – Significant In Many Ways

Posted on June 21, 2012 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 …

Libraries Through the Linked Data Telescope

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Richard Wallis

Linked Data and Linked Open Data have arrived on the library agenda. The consequence of this rise interest in library Linked Data is that the community is now exploring and debating how to migrate library records from formats such as Marc into this new RDF. In my opinion there is a great danger here of getting bogged down in the detail of how to represent every scintilla of information from a library record in every linked data view.

Is Linked Data DIY a Good Idea?

Posted on February 28, 2012 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 …

Free Data for 2.4 Million European Culture Heritage Items

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Richard Wallis

Europeana recently launched an excellent short animation explaining what Linked Open Data is and why it’s a good thing, both for users and for data providers. They did this in support of the release of a large amount of Linked Open Data describing cultural heritage assets held in Libraries, Museums, Galleries and other institutions across Europe. The significant elements in the press release, from Europeana Professional (Europeana’s professional knowledge-sharing platform), are that they are releasing data for 2.4 million items, under a CC0 open data license, and it is Linked Data in RDF. This is a wonderful resource, and example …

A Data 7th Wave Approaching

Posted on February 16, 2012 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.

A School for Data Wranglers

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Richard Wallis

The Open Knowledge Foundation in association with the Peer 2 Peer University have announced plans to launch a School of Data, to increase the skill base for Data Wranglers, and scientists. This is welcome, not just because they are doing it but also, because of who they are and the direction they are taking.

WikiData – Announcing Wikipedia’s Next Big Thing

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Richard Wallis

One of the more eagerly awaited presentations at the Semantic Tech & Business Conference in Berlin today was a late addition to the program from Denny Vrandecic. With the prominence of Dbpedia in the Linked Open Data Cloud, anything new from Wikipedia with data in it was bound to attract attention, and we were not disappointed. Denny started by telling us that from March he would be moving to Berlin to work for the Wikimedia Foundation on WikiData. He then went on to explain that the rich Wikipedia resource may have much of the world’s information but does not have …

Structured Data / Schema.org Site Audit Service Launched

Category: Open Data