In an important conference held in Malta last September, bringing together some 300 delegates from 30 countries, a wide variety of issues pertaining to digital libraries were discussed. One of these was linked data (LD), which has been described as the ‘future of the internet’. Yet, not all are in agreement with this statement.
According to Epimorphics Ltd, LD helps in publishing data on the web and enables integration, linking and reuse across different silos. The LD framework has the following potential if utilised properly and efficiently: it is a global network of things; each is identified by a URI (uniform resource identifier); fetching a URI gives a set of statements; things are connected by typed links; and it is open, where anyone can say anything about anything else.
World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee came up with four distinct but interrelated rules for LD: use URIs as names for things; use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names; when someone looks up a URI, provide useful information; and include links to other URIs to discover more things.
However, LD works with ontologies, which may be simply defined as a common vocabulary and are therefore necessary. Some of the available ontologies include FOAF, VIAF, owl, Dublin Core, frbr, among others.
The RDF (resource description framework) is a standard model for data interchange on the web and it functions in triple, i.e. three aspects that need to be present for the data to be discoverable on the web, namely, subject, predicate and object.
What does LD offer to libraries? The first library principle is ‘information access’. This is what LD can offer and make possible to users, namely, more access to information, and preferably, more accurate and authoritative information.
As already described above, to have LD we need to use the RDF together with ontologies (controlled vocabularies), such as the DC (Dublin Core) or the FOAF (Friend-of-a-Friend). As best practice, libraries should always make use of ‘authority files’; VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) is one of these authority files which may be used by libraries to acquire their information and also link their data. One last concept for libraries and corporations alike would be to adopt a modus operandi of using metadata. The VIAF is a multi-linking authority file from various services. This is useful for libraries.
In the information paradigm/society, the question is no longer whether information is there or not, but we are now considering not only the value and authority of information but also new ways to make the same information linked together. It will be of little value if there is a lot of information available, yet it cannot be discovered and is consequently not accessible.
Everyone wants to access good and authoritative information with which further data/information may be accessed. Additionally, the question of accessibility and discoverability comes into play. Therefore, libraries and entities and everyone who publishes on the web have the responsibility to make things (data/information) both discoverable and accessible. LD is the way forward for this to happen.
More information is available at https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/ods/document/online-training-material .
Claudio Laferla is an information professional in the Knowledge Management Centre at the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA).