FEATURE Data sharing
Librarians should embrace linked data
Data sharing in libraries doesn’t have to be daunting for librarians, writes David Stuart
I
f libraries are to realise the value of the data they have been building and refining over many years, then it is not enough for them to just embrace the web of documents, they must also embrace the web of data. The
associated technologies may seem complex and impenetrable but the idea of libraries embracing the web of data doesn’t have to mean that every librarian has to embrace every bit of technology. The web of data refers to the publication of data online in a machine-readable format, so that individual pieces of information can be both linked to and read automatically. There are vast quantities of information being shared
14 Research Information APRIL/MAY 2014
in documents on the web, but at the moment the content of most of these documents are not machine-readable; browsers know how to display the text and images on a web page, but there is little understanding of the data contained. In comparison, the web of data makes use of many of the same protocols and technologies as the web of documents, but also makes use of increasingly widely agreed standards to add meaning to the contents of pages. ‘John Smith’ becomes not just 10 characters on a page to be displayed in a large Helvetica font, but can be understood by computers to be a specific person, distinctive from other John Smiths, and that can be linked to from other entities.
Data sharing in libraries The potential of the web of data is increasingly recognised by the community of library and information professionals – not only for the publishing of catalogue data, but also for transaction data, and the datasets that are increasingly stored in institutional repositories.
Publishing catalogue data according to widely adopted standards offers the potential for the aggregation of data from multiple institutions and the creation of new websites and services: a library’s holdings will appear in search engine results, rather than requiring users to visit a library’s own website; union catalogues can become far more comprehensive; and the catalogue data can be combined with data from other sources to provide new insights and mashups. Transaction data, suitably anonymised, offers the potential for an additional level of insight into the value of library holdings that may be incorporated into a host of new recommendation systems. The publishing of research datasets in structured formats will potentially ease the process of reusing this data, enabling it to be combined more efficiently with other datasets. It is essential for libraries to embrace the potential of these technologies because the web has fundamentally changed the way people access information. Google can provide researchers in
@researchinfo
www.researchinformation.info
Mtkang/Freesoulproduction/
Shutterstock.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33