What is linked data? (Note that I’m ignoring any of the specifics of RDF, on which Linked Data depends.)

The “data” of linked data is metadata on the web that describes documents and resources; the linked part refers to the links that exist between metadata items. If this seems a little abstract, consider the following:

I own ten books related to my four interests:

• Anglo-Saxon language (properly, Old English)
• The history of Winchester, England
• Computer programming
• Cookery

The titles I own are:

Arnow, G. W. D. M. (1998). Introduction to Programming Using Java: An Object-Oriented Approach. Addison-Wesley.

Arnow, D., Dexter, S., & Weiss, G. (2003). Introduction to Programming Using Java: An Object-Oriented Approach (2nd ed.). Addison Wesley.

Fearnley-Whittingstall, H., & Carr, F. (2008). The River Cottage Family Cookbook. Ten Speed Press.

Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., & Vlissides, J. M. (1994). Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (illustrated edition.). Addison-Wesley Professional.

Hagen, A. (2006). Anglo-saxon Food & Drink. Anglo-Saxon Books.

Hawkes, B. A. L. M. A. S. C. (1970). Two Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries at Winnall, Winchester, Hampshire. Maney Publishing.

Hervey, T. (2007). The Bishops Of Winchester In The Anglo-Saxon And Anglo-Norman Periods. Kessinger Publishing, LLC.

Mitchell, B., & Robinson, F. C. (2007). A Guide to Old English (7th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

Sweet, H. (1982). Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer (9th ed.). Oxford University Press, USA.

Sweet, H. (2008). An Anglo-Saxon Primer (3rd ed.). Tiger Xenophon.

I want some way of keeping track of my book collection, so I create a catalogue of RDF files where I tag the various books with their topics:

• Books by Arnow, Arnow et al. and Gamma et al. are tagged as Computer Science
• Books by Fearnley-Whittingstall and Hagen are tagged as Cookery
• Books by Hawkes and Hervey are tagged as History — Winchester
• Books By Mitchell & Robinson and Sweet are tagges as Language — Old English

Immediately, I see that I have several editions of the same book, so I add a simple SameAs relation between these books by adding a URL to the RDF metadata of the other book, so Arnow (1998) and Arnow et al. (2003) link to one another in this way, as do Sweet (1982) and (2008). In this way I can easily see which books are related by following a link (technically “dereferencing” a URL).

The book on design patterns is so fundamentally important within computer science that I add a SeeAlso link to this book from the other computer science titles; in the same way, I can choose to add a SeeAlso relation between the other books tagged with the same tags, allowing me to easily access each title from a related title.

Because my interest in Winchester primarily relates to the Anglo-Saxon period, and especially linguistic/onomastic aspect of its history, I find it useful to link (SeeAlso) the titles on Winchester to the books on Old English. At the same time, I also add a SeeAlso to the book on Anglo-Saxon cookery for each of the titles on Winchester and Old English.

Based on this, I can at any time explore my book collection in a novel way; from any given starting point, I have numerous avenues to explore. I have a simple way to see that there are several editions of a title, and that the titles in my collection relate to a number of topics, which typically interlink. It is difficult to find a link between cookery or Anglo-Saxon history and language and computer science, but I am sure that more formal analyses within computational linguistics would fit into the model I have described in an understandable fashion.

It is worth noting that it is debatable whether my use of SeeAlso and SameAs strictly speaking correct, but it illustrates the point about enriching a collection of metadata with links. More information about metadata schemas for linked data can be found in the links section below.

It is also worth noting that this interlinking is two way, and that this leads to redundance (in order to get from A to B you need an explicit link, in order to get from B to A, you need another explicit link). This isn’t really a problem because the data-storage overhead is minimal, and the dereferencing of URLs can be done in such a way that redundance does not create unnecessary work (by, for example, not dereferencing URLs that have already been visited).

Links

linkeddata.org

RDF homepage (for RDF basics, schema and ontologies)

I have just started using Zotero’s groups feature that allows you to share a set of references with other users. This feature is really great, and it works seamlessly with the Zotero plugin. It occurs to me that this must be a great tool for teachers wishing to share references with students, as well as project groups like the one I work in.

My current bugbear is that it isn’t possible to copy a folder over into the group library from my library, just as well that I’m a belt ad braces type who tags everything in addition to creating indecipherable folder structures.

On my travels on the Zotero webpage, I came across a list of registered users broken down by research interests. The interesting thing to note is that Zotero is now used in many fields. These numbers represent the optional choice of registering a field of interest when a Zotero account is created. Note that this means that a single person may be registered multiple times or not at all (Zotero does not require users to have an account to use the software).

Again, Zotero really is the best reference tool — if you’re not locked in, you’re not locked out. (And thank goodness for BibTeX support!)

[This is a draft, I'll be revising it]

The stream of mail on the Biblioteknorge mailing list about BIBSYS’ modernization has been almost unstoppable — at least five mails — and names like Knut Hegna, Hans Martin Fagerli, Kim Tallerås and Dagmar Langeggen have been connected to the topic.

What’s the fuss? Well, it seems like BIBSYS will continue developing its own library management system, rather than buying off the shelf software. This contradicts the findings of “that there report” — you know, the one that recommended getting a new, off-the-shelf system. Full of wackiness — especially points at which it contravened the standard rules that a report should contain information about its subject from commonly accepted reality rather than the creative imagination — it is easy to ignore that report, but maybe it shouldn’t have been simply “ignored”.

My take on the whole thing: really very dull, I’m sorry.

Starting at the outside edge: the online public access catalogue is a relatively uninteresting concept today, and is becoming less interesting with each day that passes, here’s why:

• Users aren’t finding their information there, they’re finding it on the web (report)
• University libraries aren’t registering their information in an OPAC (at best they import a subset of the e-journal and e-book data they are spending the majority of their finances on)
• The metadata a researcher needs is not registered in an OPAC, it is available only in research databases
• Attempts at integrating/federating search in metadata for academic content have failed
• Portals cost money, and this is money wasted when the user doesn’t want or need to use it

The internals of a monolithic library management system are also past their sell-by-date for the majority of academic institutions:

• Packages and subscriptions increasingly account for the majority of spending
• Metadata import related to packages are typically limited
• Acquisitions are increasingly expected to conform to norms applied in the rest of the institution
• User systems are in place that register users’ role and access privileges

Given that the majority of spending goes on resources that are already findable using other methods (the metadata we’re importing must come from somewhere, and Google is the preferred tool of discovery), there is really very little need to register the majority of objects we’re currently registering.

Academic institutions — especially publicly funded ones — have resource management systems that ensure that every economic transaction is done by the book, i.e. ensuring that things are put out to tender, and that an economic overview is available to the various controllers around and about. This means that an economy module in a library management system is not a good thing, it encourages practices that go outside normal routines, and hinders the financial controllers from doing their job (you do not want or need more than one system for this kind of thing).

Another aspect of the library management system is that of loan data, where a user profile system provides what data is needed about a borrower, and then attaches various objects to this. At a modern academic institution integration of the insitutional user-profile system with the library management system’s user-profile system is one big headache…so why do things that way around? Why not implement the necessary slots for library data in the existing institutional system? The framework for the kind of query across several thousand records is already in palce, so why not use it? There is time and money to be saved here too.

We’ve got rid of a few subsystems here, but were back to the sticky issues:

• registration of items in a library’s collections
• sharing of data

Simplicity itself would be requiring all third parties to supply Linked Data for their products (and yes, this is a realistic thing to ask), and then registering the remainder by creating a local linked data store containing either totally unique metadata for items that are otherwise not registered anywhere, or by linking to existing items registered in other Linked Data stores (and this can include non-Norwegian sources). In this way, a massive web of data is available to the library’s users, containing references not only to things in the local library’s holdings, but potentially to all existing items in any library that provides Linked Data.

The OPAC can now either be replaced by the generic, or domain specific semantic browser that a given user prefers, or a user interface that provides a wrapper for SPARQL queries and a presentation format for the data returned from the dereferenced URIs contained in the Linked Data. The latter here could be something created locally by the library IT staff, or an enterprising librarian who knows a bit of Javascript, and can follow the instructions given in a typical Javascript library.

BIBSYS can potentially be a provider of tools for a) creating Linked Data, and b) storage and retrieval of this. Modules for solving issues related to lending and finances could be off-the-shelf software, supplied where these were deemed necessary.

Links:

Linked data [wikipedia]

Semantic Marc, MARC21 and the Semantic Web

BIBLIOTEKNORGE om vedtak om modernisering av BIBSYS Biblioteksystem

I have updated the emtacl10: emerging technologies in academic libraries website; the changes add a lot of content (and some new dates!) to the information that was published previously.

For me, the interesting thing was combining a set of technologies:

• blueprint css
• jquery
• eXtensible Metadata Platform (XMP)
• RSS
• AJAX

The really cool thing about these technologies is that they made everything really quite easy; easy to create valid, accessible code, and easy to do all of this quickly.

The “assets” list is created from metadata embedded into the files that are listed there; this, and the rest of the content is updated using AJAX provided by the jquery framework. Blueprint css is used for the layout.

Two day’s work inclusive of everything! (And I really dislike creating webpages, but this verged on fun.)

Det viser seg at papirkildene er mer verdsatt i utdanningssektoren!

I tabellen finner du oversikt over feilene jeg fant som en del av statistikkarbeidet jeg gjør for NTNU Biblioteket — basert på en kryssreferanse med sjekk på alle ISSN registrert i DBH sin publiseringskanaloversikt og NTNUs SFX-implementasjon. Tittel-lenken går til søk etter tittel, ISSN-lenkene går til ISSN-søk.

Pedantisk? Spørs om registrerting i FRIDA blir påvirket (i disse tilfellene har det ingenting å si).

Flock, the webbrowser — I haven’t tried using* it before, but there you go. This was posted from Flock, the integration services is an interesting idea.

*I did test the NTNU Library toolbar on Flock

I gave a presentation of what was termed “integrated search” and “news” at NTNU Library’s internal seminar last Thursday (2009-05-28); what I presented can be characterized in the following:

• context-based services
• RSS/Atom
• Search

The last two aren’t really that interesting, but the first item really is.

I made the point that our users are dependent on profile-services (i.e. services where they have a username and password that links them to an account that contains some details about them). These profile services often contain information that is relevant to their research/study interests (remember that we’re talking about a university library here).

I created two mock-ups, one of the university intranett, where a member of staff or student will have their department listed as part of their profile data; and a second one based on the learning management system in use at NTNU, Its:Learning. In the latter, it is possible to specify search sources including recommended reading, and resources linked directly to a programme of study.

Connecting the profile data on their interests with a set of resources/news feeds can hardly be described as difficult, so why is this not yet being done? To be honest, it is difficult for the library to get access to the necessary APIs to enable us to link our data to the data in these restricted, profile-based resources. We had extensive communication with Its:Learning, only to be told that they weren’t interested in working with us (they had other priorities). A shame really in this latter case, because we pretty much had everything ready from our side.

The idea of creating relevance by linking known research/study interests together with the library’s resources is not new, and in fact I have just taken receipt of the result of a customer-driven project by some students from NTNU’s computer science department. The students delivered a nice example of a feed aggregator that can also classify feeds according to “Norsk inndeling av vitenskapsdisipliner”, a Norwegian classification system for scientific disciplines. This kind of aggregator was designed to slip easily into a model where the data si fed into other systems, preferably using the APIs mentioned above. In fact, that was the whole point (the students did a good job, by the way ).

It was pointed out to me that Google (Scholar) rules the roost when it comes to search, but I still reckon that providing quality information to academics based on relevance criteria will provide time-savings compared to the Google alternative. Google Scholar is a really good tool, but it just can’t beat the relevance of information in the small, commercial subject databases that the library provides its users. The problem is getting the users to look at these databases first — and it is here that the integration of search is a big issue.

The news approach provides links to the latest results from the databases and journals and is really a supplement to searching, it saves users time by providing users with the newest research in their field. Google can’t really do this acceptably well yet (sort by latest is hit and miss at best), so we have a good reason to provide this kind of service.

I work a lot with the academic community at university, and I note that a lot of the work of finding new articles can be simplified by using news feeds. Unfortunately, the quality of news feeds that can be subscribed to varies immensely.

If I were to take the step of aggregating the various news feeds for the different academic communities using the Java-WS FeedAggregator, the content I would be presenting would not be coherent. Some of the news feeds do not contain the journal information (”hey this is the feed for journal X”, which works fine as long as the content isn’t aggregated away from the context of “this journal’s feed”, others lack other information such as year, volume and issue.

Not a problem you might say, but I have a scenario I’d like to paint for you: all of the journals use a common standard design for their feeds containing at a minimum:

• Article title
• Article authors
• Article abstract
• Journal title
• Journal year, volume and issue
• Journal ISSN (print and online)
• an OpenURL
• DOI

Based on this standard, it wouldn’t be difficult to aggregate content from various sources and create a simple, duplicate-free feed that staff and students could use to keep themselves up to date.

As it is at the moment, the best a library user can hope for is that their favourite research database provides a search-to-RSS service.

This thing is though that as journal publishers slowly realise that content of this kind is best represented in multiple formats that an XML format will allow them to transform their journal TOCS to precisely this: email alerts, RSS, ATOM, JSON and so on. There is no real incentive to create a standard way of presenting this kind of data as a feed, but it would provide benefits for everyone concerned (yes, the publishers too!)

As part of the last round of development, we continued adding content to the XML sources. We’ve supplied all of the details for each of the 11 branch libraries at NTNU Library.

A very dull, intensive job, but it is done now.

Take a look

I happen to know that the first announcement of this conference is just around the corner, so I thought that I’d give it a bit of press now: emtacl10: emerging technologies in academic libraries. [Update: dates 26-28 April 2010!]

In layman’s terms, this is a web 2.0 conference with a difference: it’s aimed fairly and squarely at the higher educational library sector. Sounds exciting? I hope so!

Head on over to www.emtacl.com for more information.