Designing the Garden: Getting Grounded in Linked Data
#rwlod
Jenn Riley (@jenlrile)Associate Dean, Digital InitiativesMcGill University
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.”
--Shakespeare, The Tempest #rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015#rwlod
Photo by Liam Moloney, https://flic.kr/p/7Qux27, CC BY-SA
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
1. It’s not “our” data and “their” data – it’s one big graph.
#rwlod
It’s about the connections
https://linkedjazz.org/network/
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
Graph-based world views
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http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2015/06/06/querying-rdf-data-with-text-annotated-graphs/
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
Connecting things together
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dbpedia:William_Shakespeare
1615-04-23
1564-04-26
dbpedia:Stratford-
upon-Avon
dbpedia-
owl:birt
hPlace
dbpedia-owl:deathDate
dbpedia-owl:birthDate worldcat-
work:1074526681
fast:1069678 # Political Refugees
“Tragicomedy’
“Shakespeare’s Comedy of the
Tempest”
schema:about
schema-name
schema:genre
viaf:96994048
# William Shakespeare
foaf:person
rdf: type
schema: CreativeWork
rdf: type
schema:creator
owl: s
ameA
s
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
Creating so much data!
Where the scope of “library data” ends
What it is and isn’t “our job” to do
Making “complete” descriptions ourselves
Mapping data from “other” vocabularies into “library” vocabularies
This means we can stop worrying about…
#rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
Learning other metadata cultures
Being Linked Data ecosystem good citizens
How the technology and the data can most effectively work together
Making connections between things
Understanding other vocabularies and communities
And start worrying about…
#rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
2. We can expect more intelligence in the system.
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http://hangingtogether.org/?p=4167; September 2014
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015#rwlod
Guido Reni (1575-1642)
Hercules Killing the Hydra of Lerna
c. 1620-1621
oil on canvas
commissioned along with other scenes from the mythology of Hercules in 1617 by Ferdinando Gonzaga, for a room in the Villa Favorita in Mantua, Italy inv. 535
Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
Mine usage data to enhance relevance and utility in discovery
Start from the most relevant information and provide easy means for quick expansion on demand
Coherently display conflicting information
Give indications of provenance of information
What systems must do for users
#rwlod
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If we’re serious about information literacy, we have to
give our users tools and then trust them.
#rwlod
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Flag dead ends for review and action
Normalize most string-based data
Highlight potentially conflicting information
Hide complexity (URIs, etc)
Mine and show candidate connections for review
What systems must do for metadata maintainers
#rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
Choosing one authoritative “correct” assertion in the face of conflicting data
Whether or not a given source meets a certain standard for authority
Authorized headings, access points And textual justifications for them
A large proportion of the data cleanup tasks we used to do For example, the formatting of strings But we can expect a new set of these to emerge!
This means we can stop worrying about…
#rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
How to enhance system algorithms
How users best interact with complicated information
Methods for automated metadata creation and cleanup
Getting large amounts of new data into the system
And start worrying about…
#rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
3. The information age has provided a new definition of “authority.”
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Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
Current narrative: Libraries create good
metadata! Because we’re trained to do so We’re consistent and follow
rules That’s what makes good data Other people create bad data Because it’s not consistent Using a well build record
structure is a key part of good metadata
But… We don’t read the books we
catalogue We don’t typically have expertise in
the subjects of the works we describe
Sometimes we don’t even read or speak the language those works use
Our perspective is pretty different from our users’
Number of things to describe is quickly expanding and our budgets are shrinking
Let’s take a good, hard look at our “authoritative” data
#rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
Remember, we’re looking at more intelligent systems in the LD world
That can deal with inconsistency, masking it or cleaning it up
The LD graph allows us to not worry about metadata structures
So consistency and rules are no longer the primary drivers of good metadata
Which means we can turn large swaths of the creation of metadata over to domain experts
Wait, it’s not about consistency and rules?
#rwlod
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https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:5h73q9544
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
If we’re serious about good metadata, we need to start from
expert information.
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We need this guy
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http://www.betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/scholars-lose-themselves-in-their-research/
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And we need these folks too!
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Photo by veggiesosage, https://flic.kr/p/5WjAsK, CC-BY-NC-ND
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Really, it’s going to be OK
https://xkcd.com/386/
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The Linked Data community cares about provenance
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http://www.w3.org/standards/techs/provenance#w3c_all
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Deep research on materials for which there’s already a knowledgeable community
Descriptions being “complete”
Making sure everything is “right”
This means we can stop worrying about…
#rwlod
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Mining the data that’s already out there
Promoting voices of those who engage with content
How usable systems can be built to generate Linked Data from activities real people already partake in
Seeding basic information for the rare and unique materials we hold that have never been released
Connecting data from communities operating in different languages
And start worrying about…
#rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
4. Our job is to tend the garden.
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Metadata is an ecosystem
Photo by Temari 09, https://flic.kr/p/6UskT1, CC-BY-NC
The garden needs tending
Photo by Center for International Forestry Research, https://flic.kr/p/dbx1Gt,CC-BY-NC-ND
A new model – making connections
https://thenounproject.com/term/connection/25392/
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
“Original cataloguing” and “copy cataloguing”
Getting data into “our systems”
Doing all the work that needs to be done the first time we think about a specific item
This means we can stop worrying about…
#rwlod
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Understanding the Linked Data environment
Locating large and useful datasets
Understanding vocabularies developed elsewhere
Finding good people that can analyze relationships and make new connections
And start worrying about…
#rwlod
The data and systems are all in the cloud
Library-based discovery less important but likely still around for a while
Several ways systems can navigate the graph Crawling Dereferencing Query federation (See http://linkeddatabook.com/editions/1.0/#htoc84)
So how will Linked Data systems work?
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
This is all the way it should work
It’s going to be a while before we get there
Big effort needed to start connecting up these data sets
Data sets and tools will get better as we start using the data in this way and demand more
The library community can help to shape this evolution, but only if we fully understand and engage with the assumptions and mechanisms in play in the Linked Data community
Reality check
#rwlod
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
This will be hard. But that won’t stop us.
We need to redefine our baseline.
We need to rethink what new models mean for us.
And, most importantly, we need to put the right people in positions to work through these issues and get the details settled.
A sea-change? Most definitely.
#rwlod
We got this.
Beyond the Looking Glass, ALCTS Preconference 2015
@jenlrile
These presentation slides: http://www.jennriley.com/presentations/alaannual2015/riley-garden.pptx
Thank you!
#rwlod