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The Library of Congress made an announcement earlier this week that has left some usually vocal library pundits speechless. MARC is Dead! – RDA made irrelevant! – cries that can be heard rattling around the bibliographic blogo-twittersphere.
The W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group has published it’s Final Report after a year of deliberation. The mission of the Library Linked Data Incubator Group was to help increase the global interoperability of library data on the Web by focusing on the potential role of Linked Data technologies. This report contains several messages that are not just interesting and relevant for the Linked Data enthusiast in the library community. It contains some home truths for those in libraries who think that a slight tweak to the status quo, such as adopting RDA, will be sufficient to keep libraries [data] …
The Web has been around for getting on for a couple of decades now, and massive industries have grown up around the magic of making it work for you and your organisation. Some of it, it has to be said, can be considered snake-oil. Much of it is the output of some of the best brains on the planet. Where, on the hit parade of technological revolutions to influence mankind, the Web is placed is oft disputed, but it is definitely up there with fire, steam, electricity, computing, and of course the wheel. Similar debates, are and will virtually rage, …
A significant step towards open bibliographic data was made in Copenhagen this week at the 25th anniversary meeting of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) hosted by the Royal Library of Denmark. From the CENL announcement: …the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), has voted overwhelmingly to support the open licensing of their data. What does that mean in practice? It means that the datasets describing all the millions of books and texts ever published in Europe – the title, author, date, imprint, place of publication and so on, which exists in the vast library catalogues of Europe – …
This post was initially just going to be about the presentation The Simple Power of the Link that I gave in the opening session of The Semantic Tech & Business Conference in London earlier this week. However I realise now that it’s title, chosen to draw attention to the core utility and power of the basic links in Linked Data, has resonance and relevance for the conference as a whole. This was the first conference in the long running Semtech series to venture in to Europe as well as include the word business in it’s name. This obviously recognises the …
Like many of my posts, this one comes from the threads of several disparate conversations coming together in my mind, in an almost astrological conjunction. One thread stems from my recent Should SEO Focus in on Linked Data? post, in which I was concluding that the group, loosely described as the SEO community, could usefully focus in on the benefits of Linked Data in their quest to improve the business of the sites and organisations they support. Following the post I received an email looking for clarification of something I said. I am interested in understanding better the allusion you …
National Archives announced today UK government licensing policy extended to make more public sector information available: Building on the success of the Open Government Licence, The National Archives has extended the scope of its licensing policy, encouraging and enabling even easier re-use of a wider range of public sector information. The UK Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF), the policy and legal framework for the re-use of public sector information, now offers a growing portfolio of licences and guidance to meet the diverse needs and requirements of both public sector information providers and re-user communities. On the surface this is move is …
It is well known, the business of SEO is all about influencing SERPs, or is it? Let me open up those acronyms: Those engaged in the business of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) focus much of their efforts on influencing Search Engine Result Pages (SERP), or more specifically the relevance and representation of their targeted items upon those pages. As many a guide to SEO will tell you, some of this is simple – understanding the basics of how search engines operate, or even just purchasing the right advertising links on the SERP. Quite simple in objective, but in reality an …
A couple of weeks back UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced the broadening of the publicly available government data with the publishing of key data on the National Health Service, schools, criminal courts and transport. The background to the announcement was a celebration of the preceding year of activity in the areas of transparency and open data, with many core government data sets being published. Too many to list here, but the 7,200+ listed on data.gov.uk gives you an insight. The political guide to this is undeniable, as Mr Cameron makes clear in his YouTube speech for the announcement “Information …
Today the British Library announced a significant contribution to the development, application, and sharing of bibliographic data using Linked Data techniques and technologies, with a preview of a new approach to publishing the British National Bibliography. Chief Executive Dame Lynne Brindley announced the initiative in her Keynote at Linked Data and Libraries 2011, hosted by Talis at the British Library (BL) in London. The Metadata Services Team at BL have been working with Tim Hodson, and other Talis consultants, over the last few months to apply Linked Data modelling practices to bibliographic resources. The British National Bibliography (BNB) of 2.8 …
