Linked Open Data: Opportunities & Barriers for Archives

Adrian StevensonLOCAH Project Manager

UKOLN, University of Bath, UK

Archives 360, Society of American ArchivistsChicago, USA

26th August 2011

The goal of Linked Data is to enable people to share structured data on the Web as easily as they can share documents today.Bizer/Cyganiak/Heath Linked Data Tutorial, linkeddata.org

Linked Data Design Issues

• URIs• LD Design Issues• Triples

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

Triples• Triples statements– ‘Things’ have ‘properties’ with ‘values’– Subject – Predicate - Object

• Triples are the basis of RDF and Linked Data

ArchivalResource

Repository Provides Access To

The Rolling Stones

Keith Richards Is Member Of

LOCAH Project• Linked Open Copac and Archives Hub

• Funded by #JiscEXPO 2/10 ‘Expose’ call– 1 year project. Started August 2010

• Partners & Consultants:– UKOLN, Mimas, Eduserv, Talis, OCLC, Ed

Summers

• http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/

What is LOCAH Doing?

• Part 1: Exposing Archives Hub & Copac data as Linked Data

• Part 2: Creating a prototype visualisation

• Part 3: Reporting on opportunities and barriers

ArchivalResource

Finding Aid

EAD Document

Biographical History

Agent

Family Person Place

Concept

Genre Function

Organisation

maintainedBy/maintains

origination

associatedWith

accessProvidedBy/providesAccessTo

topic/page

hasPart/partOf

hasPart/partOf

encodedAs/encodes

Repository(Agent)

Book

Place

topic/page

Language

Level

administeredBy/administers

hasBiogHist/isBiogHistFor

foaf:focus Is-a associatedWith

level

Is-a

language

ConceptScheme

inScheme

ObjectrepresentedBy

PostcodeUnit

Extent

Creation

Birth Death

extent

participates in

TemporalEntity

TemporalEntity

at time

at time

product of

in

Archives Hub Model

We’re Linking Data!• If something is identified, it can be linked to• We take items from our datasets and link them

to items from other datasets

BBCVIAF

DBPedia

Archives Hub

Copac

GeoNames

Enhancing our data• Already have some links:– Time - reference.data.gov.uk URIs– Location - UK Postcodes URIs and Ordnance Survey URIs – Names - Virtual International Authority File• VIAF matches and links widely-used authority files -

http://viaf.org/– Names - DBPedia

• Also looking at:– Subjects - Library Congress Subject Headings and

DBPedia– Open Calais for entity extraction – from ‘bioghist’ field

http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk/

http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk/id/person/nra/webbmarthabeatrice1858-1943socialreformer

Visualisation Prototype• Using Timemap –

– Googlemaps and Simile

– http://code.google.com/p/timemap/

• Early stages with this• Will give location and

‘extent’ of archive.• Will link through to

Archives Hub

Key Benefit of Linked Data• API based mashups work against a fixed

set of data sources• Hand crafted by humans• Don’t integrate well

• Linked Data promises an unbound global data space• Easy dataset integration• Generic ‘mesh-up’ tools

Linked Open Data

• Data can be open or closed• Linked Data can be open or

closed• Most benefit gained when data is

open

Some challenges

Data Modelling

• Steep learning curve–RDF terminology “confusing”– Lack of archival examples

• Complexity–Archival description is hierarchical and

multi-level• ‘Dirty’ Data

Linking Subjects

Linking Places

Sustainability• Can you rely on data sources long-term? • Ed Summers at the Library of Congress

created http://lcsh.info• Linked Data interface for LOC subject

headings• People started using it

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Scalability / Provenance

Example by Bradley Allen, Elsevier at LOD LAM Summit, SF, USA, June 2011

• Same issue with attribution• Solutions: Named graphs? Quads? • Best Practice

Licensing

• Ownership of data often not clear• Hard to track attribution• CC0 for Archives Hub and Copac

data

Is Linked Data the Way?

• Enables ‘straightforward’ integration of wide variety of data sources

• Archival data can ‘work harder’• New channels into your data• Researchers are more likely to discover

sources • ‘Hidden' archives collections of become of the

Web

Attribution and CC License

• Sections of this presentation adapted from materials created by other members of the LOCAH Project

• This presentation available under creative commons Non Commercial-Share Alike:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/