The W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group DRAFT REPORT

The W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group has issued a draft report for commentary. Linked library data is an opportunity to bring library concepts and practices to the Web in ways that transcend any individual library and its individual limitations.

I quote here one line from the benefits section. "The Linked Data approach offers significant advantages over current practices for creating and delivering library data while providing a natural extension to the collaborative sharing models historically employed by libraries, archives, and museums ("memory institutions")." And one more from the benefits to "memory institutions." "By using Linked Data, memory institutions will create an open, global pool of shared data that can be used and re-used to describe resources, with a limited amount of redundant effort compared with current cataloguing processes." Cheaper, faster, better.

From a cataloger's viewpoint, library linked data is the ultimate cooperative cataloging environment and the ultimate user services environment.

The report
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/DraftReportWithTransclusion
includes these sections:

Benefits
Vocabularies and Datasets
Relevant Technologies
Implementation challenges
Recommendations

Two related parts are:

Use Cases, a survey report describing existing projects
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/UseCaseReport

Vocabularies and Datasets, a survey report
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/Vocabulary_and_Dataset

The LLD XG invite comments from interested members of the public.

Feedback can sent as comments to individual sections posted on the dedicated blog at http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/w3clld/ or by email to the public mailing list (public-lld@w3.org, archived at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lld/ ) using descriptive subject lines such as '[COMMENTS] "Benefits" section.'

Comments are especially welcome in the next four weeks (through 22 July). Reviewers should note that as with Wikipedia, the text may be revised and corrected by its editors in response to comments at any time, but that earlier versions of a document may be viewed by clicking on the History tab.

It is anticipated that the three reports will be published in final form by 31 August.

LC's effort to define an extended date/time format

Library of Congress has proposed an extended date/time definition for use with ISO 8601 and possibly with W3C as an XML schema type.

http://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/index.html

The problem: No standard date/time format meets the needs of XML metadata schemas. W3C XML Schema built-in types xs:date, xs:time, and xs:dateTime are inadequate, as is W3CDTF, and TEMPER. ISO 8601 and the W3C schema are incompatible. The LC proposal addresses that and adds BCE dates, open date ranges, and useful/necessary concepts like "uncertain" and "approximate" to the definition and the format.

The proposal could be incorporated into schemas such as MODS and METS. (Note: it is already in use within the PREMIS schema.) It may be proposed for standardization in ISO 8601 or it might be proposed to W3C for adoption as an XML schema type – the benefits of this are clear, among them: strict validation would be supported.