Building the Open University’s Web of Linked Data

Mathieu d’Aquin and the LUCERO team

@mdaquin

Knowledge Media Institute, the Open University

LUCERO project

lucero-project.info – data.open.ac.uk

PeopleCarlo Allocca

(Dev)

Mathieu d’Aquin(PD)

Salman Elahi((Ex)-Dev)

Enrico Motta(SGP)

Andriy Nikolov(linking)

Jane Whild(Admin)

Fouad Zablith(Dev)

Library Specialists

Owen Stephens(PM)

Richard Nurse((ex-)PM)

Non ScantleburyArts Specialists

Suzanne Duncanson-HunterJohn Wolfe

Paul Lawrence

Stuart Brown

Data Owners

KMi

OU Library

Com./StudentComp.Services

Arts

Linked Data

• As set of principles and technologies for a Web of Data– Putting the “raw” data online in a

standard, web enabled representation (RDF)

– Make the data Web addressable (URIs)

– Link with other data

Graph (up to date)

So Linked Data for the OU?

ORO

Archive of Course Material

Library’sCatalogueOf Digital Content

OpenLearnContent

A/V MaterialPodcastsiTunesU

Data from Research Outputs

BBC

DBPedia

DBLP

RAE

geonames

data.gov.uk

Currently: OU public data sit in different systems – hard to discover, obtain, integrate by users.

Exposed as linked data, our data interlink with each other and the external world: become part of the “global data space” on the Web

Why is it important?• The OU has been the first University to expose its data

as linked data: http://data.open.ac.uk• Now widely recognized as a critical step forward for the

HE sector in the UK (and worldwide)– Favor transparency and reuse of data, both externally and

internally– Reduces cost of dealing with our own public data: integration

and reuse by design– Enable both new kinds of applications, and to make the

ones that are already feasible more cost effective

• At least 3 other UK universities have now followed our example: – http://data.online.lincoln.ac.uk/, http://data.ox.ac.uk/,

http://data.southampton.ac.uk/– And others in other countries are setting up similar initiatives

The data.open.ac.uk Stack

Technical infrastructure

Organizational infrastructure

Institutional repository data

Research Data (Arts)

Applications

data.open.ac.uk

Planning + Logging

Collect Extract Link Store Expose

OntologiesScheduler

RSS Updater Triple Store

Delete (1)Add (2)

Index Search

SPARQLendpoint

Web Server

RSS Extractor

XML Updater

RDF Extractor

RDF Cleaner

Cleaning rules

Each datasets

Lib, courses, loc

ORO, podcast

URL redirection rules

RSS feed

New itemsObsolete items

RDF file (add) RDF file (delete)

RDF file (add) RDF file (delete)

Generic process Dataset specific process

Entity Name

SystemURI creation rules

Method for a exposing a dataset

Initial Meeting with Data Owner

- Identify data- Get sample data- Identify Copyright Issues- Identify possible links- Identify users and usage

Data Modeling sessions

Lucero Core Team

Data Owner

Lucero KMi Team

Lucero members

- Find reusable ontologies- Map onto the data- Identify uncovered parts- Define URI Scheme

Data Modeling Validation

Lucero Core Team

Data Owner

Development of Extractor

URI Creation Rules

DefinitionDeploymentLucero KMi

Team

Datasets• Already “officially” in place:

– ORO: more than 18,000 publications from OU researchers– Podcasts: 2,500 audio and video tracks from

podcast.open.ac.uk, linked to the relate courses– Study at the OU: more than 600 live module descriptions– OpenLearn: more than 550 Units of course material– KMi Staff and Planet newsletter

• Currently being processed:– OU Buildings in MK and regional centers– Library Catalogue– YouTube channel– Old Courses– “Reading Experience Database” project – People Profiles

Screenshot of the dataset page

Applications• For education

– Mobile podcast explorer, podcast explorer on TV – OU Building Map, OU location tracker (cf.

foursquare)– OU Expert Search– Connecting courses/OpenLearn to relevant

podcast– OU Course Profile Facebook app using list of

courses, “Study Buddy” app connecting facebook users to relevant courses

• For Research– Display connections in a research community– Research Data/Impact Analysis– Connection research datasets to external data

Example application: Link OpenLearn to relevant course/podcasts

Example Application: keep track of location, meetings, tutorials, at the OU

Example application: exploring research communities

EXAMPLE APPLICATION:Expert Search using publication information and connecting to contact information within the OU

Example application: Explore Information about a person in the “Reading Experience Database” based on data provided by DBPedia (Linked Data version of Wikipedia) New ways to look at humanities research data

The future (practically)• More data… always more data• More links, especially to external entities

– BBC– Government agencies– Other universities

• More applications:– Integration into main OU websites (e.g., study at the OU)– Integration into common OU applications (people profile,

Facebook course profile, etc.)– Support for common OU processes (REF audit, course

recommendation, providing resources to AL and lecturers)

• Sustainability – LUCERO is finishing soon and….– data.open.ac.uk is becoming a core component of the OU

information infrastructure…

The future (more generally) • From nice demonstrators to real semantic web

applications– Use of reasoning and data mining for data consolidation and

analysis– Need proper frameworks for application developers!

• Linked data and the Semantic Web to support research– Not only research communities– Identifying new research questions and collecting evidence

through connected datasets

• It is not about individual Universities!– Universities sharing data to benefit students and researchers:

the higher education’s web of linked data– Needs collective vocabularies, recipes, approaches,

classifications… the GoodRelations of higher education?

The future (research)• Linked data

analytics/Linked data mining

• Interfaces to linked data/Making sense of linked data (with ontologies)

• Semantic web for activity data/personal data

Thank You!

lucero-project.info

data.open.ac.uk

@mdaquin

@ostephens

@stuartbrown

@fzablith