IFLA 2012 OCLC Linked Data Roundtable

Martin MalmstenHead of Software Development

Libris dept., National Library of Sweden

Tuesday, August 14, 12

Libris - the Swedish Union Catalogue

Contribute what is unique to you, but gain access to all data


Swedish Union Catalogue available as Linked Data (RDF) since 2008

The National Library of Sweden released the National Bibliography and Authority file (MARC21) with a CC0 license in 2011

LIBRIS is building a new catalogue backend with SemWeb as a key technology


Open National Bibliography

• Swedish National Bibliography and Authority File released, in original format (MARC21), with a CC0 license

• Goal is to have the whole of LIBRIS released with CC0


Why CC0?

With 90 persons in this room, every minute I spend talking about licenses is 1.5 hour not spent on actually using data


A next, next, (next?) generation catalogue

• Format agnostic (MARC21, EAD, TEI, etc.)

• SemWeb technology a first class citizen

• Transition to RDA


Either aggregate all data OR be able to cope with the fact that data is created, updated and

deleted “elsewhere”


Three or four big aggregates of Linked Data is not a web


Challenges

Building a big, networked, distributed graph poses some challenges, for example:

1) Who to trust?

2) Seamlessness - you often need to react to changes in other datasets, not only import data


Dealing with change

1) Atom feeds

2) OAI-PMH

3) No dumps - but you are free to create your own


Dealing with change

3) pubsubhubbub

4) ResourceSync


Conclusion

1) Actually using/consuming Linked Data, as opposed to only exposing it, removes the technical distinction between internal and external datasets.

2) Control becomes at matter of trust, not technology

3) The record disintegrates* as the data becomes distributed.

*pssssst, and is possibly replaced by something called named graphs


Linked Data

Contribute what is unique to you, but gain access to all data


IFLA 2012 OCLC Linked Data Roundtable

Education

Transcript of IFLA 2012 OCLC Linked Data Roundtable