Archive for the ‘LinkedData’ Category
Announcement: MADS/RDF for review
A MADS/RDF ontology developed at the Library of Congress is available for a public review period until Jan. 14, 2011. The MADS/RDF (Metadata Authority Description Schema in RDF) vocabulary is a data model for authority and vocabulary data used within the library and information science (LIS) community, which is inclusive of museums, archives, and other cultural institutions. It is presented as an OWL ontology.
Documentation and the ontology are available at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/rdf/
Based on the MADS/XML schema, MADS/RDF provides a means to record data from the Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) Authorities format in RDF for use in semantic applications and Linked Data projects. MADS/RDF is a knowledge organization system designed for use with controlled values for names (personal, corporate, geographic, etc.), thesauri, taxonomies, subject heading systems, and other controlled value lists. It is closely related to SKOS, the Simple Knowledge Organization System and a widely supported and adopted RDF vocabulary. Unlike SKOS, however, which is very broad in its application, MADS/RDF is designed specifically to support authority data as used by and needed in the LIS community and its technology systems. Given the close relationship between the aim of MADS/RDF and the aim of SKOS, the MADS ontology has been fully mapped to SKOS.
Community feedback is encouraged and welcomed. The MODS listserv – MADS/XML is maintained as part of the community work on MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) – is the preferred forum for feedback: http://listserv.loc.gov/listarch/mods.html (send mail to: mods@listserv.loc.gov). Kevin Ford, the primary architect of the model, will be responding on that forum in order to have an open discussion.
Encoded Archival Context Project – Social Networks and Archival Context Project (SNAC)
From the SNAC website:
Leveraging the new standard Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF), the SNAC Project will use digital technology to “unlock” descriptions of people from finding aids and link them together in exciting new ways. We will:
- Create efficient open-source tools that allow archivists to separate the process of describing people from that of records.
- Create a prototype integrated historical resource and access system that will link descriptions of people to one another and to descriptions of resources in archives, libraries and museums; online biographical and historical databases; and other diverse resources.
Europeana White Paper 1: Knowledge = Information in Context
Europeana just released their first white page, “Knowledge = Information in Context.”
The paper covers the importance of data standards, clean data, linked data, and tools and ways to link data (more standards and APIs). The paper is an excellent paper on the importance of making digitized materials useful by creating context.*
The article as a whole discusses different standards and principles (RDF triples, Linked Data, FOAF, SKOS, semantic connections), all of which are integral parts of the web but which are not necessarily part of many cultural heritage collections. Open Library has been intensively working on issues related to linked data, as has the Library of Congress, and the University of Florida Digital Collections are connecting more metadata in the database for linked subject terms, citation fields, and facets, and much more is in the works.
* The paper appears to have been written for translatability – sometimes odd language usage is necessary for ease of translating, and this is common in technical manuals for ubiquitous software – so some of the wording is a bit unusual, but the overall shape of the argument is accurate.