LOD-LAM Tools

For the LOD-LAM community, here are resources gathered by the European Library Automation Group:

Introduction to Linked Data & Tools

RDF
RDF stands for Resource Description Framework and are the semantic web (W3C) standards.

SPARQL
SPARQL is a query language for RDF.

• Lee FeigenbaumSPARQL cheatsheet
• Lee Feigenbaum, Eric Prud’hommeaux SPARQL by example
• Dave Beckett Introduction to RDF query with SPARQL
• SPARQL specification SPARQL specification

Linked Data

• Tim Berners-Lee. Linked data : design issues
• Chris Bizer, Richard Cyganiak, Tom Heath. How to publish linked data on the Web
• Tom Heath, Christian Bizer Linked data: evolving the Web into a global data space
• Mike Bergman. The nature of connectedness
• David Weinberger. The morality of links
• Focused help:

Some Fine Questions

• What constitutes data worth linking to?
• How to find datasets suitable for interlinking?
• How to automatically discover linkable data without human intervention?
• How to make my dataset worth linking to?
• How to encourage others to link to my data?

Linked Open Data - Libraries, Archives, Museums

If there's one truly ahead-of-the-game area that librarians and archivists can claim, it's data consistency. Consistency and name authority files will propel libraries into deeper semantic engagement. Museums, archives & historical societies will vary and, in some cases, be more difficult, and possibly impossible (???) to engage with.

But, the value of museum & archive collections is HUGE.

That's the interest of Linked Open Data - Libraries, Archives, Museums (LOD-LAM).

The work of @musebrarian and the good folks building the Open-Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) could be one answer, but moving everyone into that standardized framework might be like pushing a boulder up a cliff.

How can we work with collections as they are?

Google Scholar abandoned OAI-PMH (a traditional library standard for integrating collections) in favor of using sitemaps and metadata embedded in HTML.

But, this is just one approach to organizing data and doesn't include crawling, indexing and ranking or other SEO & data-mining tactics.

My two cents in reply to @musebrarian's questions re: should we build LOD onto of OAI-PMH, I say absolutely. We should leverage all work that's been done and look for solutions to engage the wonkie, disorganized collections.

After working with data from many county historical societies and normalizing it to be exposed in a single portal, I can't help but wonder, is there a solution that doesn't require normalization of collections?

Content strategy wordlized