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.

Metadata guidelines for the UK RDTF

Andy Powell and Pete Johnston, of Eduserv, with funding from JISC, have put up some high level draft guidelines for "how metadata associated with library, museum and archival collections should be made available for the purposes of supporting resource discovery in line with the Resource Discovery Taskforce (RDTF) Vision."

See the guidelines at http://rdtfmetadata.jiscpress.org/

They are taking comments on the draft until Feb. 18.

You can read Powell's and Johnston's own commentary/announcement at their joint blog, eFoundations, at http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2011/02/metadata-guidelines-for-the-uk-rdtf.html

A few quotes from the guidelines.

"These guidelines have been developed such that they:

1. support the RDTF Vision;
2. are compatible with the outcomes of the JISC IE Technical Review meeting in London, Aug 2010;
3. are in line with Linked Data principles as far as possible;
4. are compatible with the W3C Linked Open Data Star Scheme;
5. are in line with Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector;
6. take into account the Europeana Data Model and ESE;
7. are informed by mainstream web practice and search engine behaviour and are broadly in line with the notion of “making better websites” across the library, museum and archives sectors."

"The guidelines are intended to help libraries, museums and archives expose existing metadata (and any new metadata that is created using existing practices) in ways that 1) supports the development of aggregator services and that 2) integrates well with the web of data. The intention is not to change existing cataloguing practice in libraries, museums and archives."

"RDTF metadata should be made openly available using one or more of three approaches, referred to below as the community formats approach, the RDF data approach and the Linked Data approach."

For what it is, it looks good. Powell and Johnston "believe that by putting this guidance in place it will be possible to create significantly more coherence in the way that metadata is created, managed and used across the library, archives and museum sectors than is currently the case."

When is an Antelope a Document?

When is an Antelope a Document?
A blog post by: Ijonas Kisselbach
in Enterprise Content Governance

http://blog.vamosa.com/blog/?p=507

Nice post on documentation. Brief. Well said.Follow the link in the piece to the fluidinfo piece.