Category: Libraries

Content-Negotiation for WorldCat

Posted on by Richard Wallis

I am pleased to share with you a small but significant step on the Linked Data journey for WorldCat and the exposure of data from OCLC. Content-negotiation has been implemented for the publication of Linked Data for WorldCat resources. For those immersed in the publication and consumption of Linked Data, there is little more to say.  However I suspect there are a significant number of folks reading this who are wondering what the heck I am going on about.  It is a little bit techie but I will try to keep it as simple as possible. Back last year, a …

From Records to a Web of Library Data – Pt3 Beacons of Availability

Posted on by Richard Wallis

As is often the way, you start a post without realising that it is part of a series of posts – as with the first in this series.  That one – Entification, the following one – Hubs of Authority and this, together map out a journey that I believe the library community is undertaking as it evolves from a record based system of cataloguing items towards embracing distributed open linked data principles to connect users with the resources they seek.  Although grounded in much of the theory and practice I promote and engage with, in my role as Technology Evangelist …

From Records to a Web of Library Data – Pt2 Hubs of Authority

Posted on by Richard Wallis

As is often the way, you start a post without realising that it is part of a series of posts – as with the first in this series.  That one – Entification, and the next in the series – Beacons of Availability, together map out a journey that I believe the library community is undertaking as it evolves from a record based system of cataloguing items towards embracing distributed open linked data principles to connect users with the resources they seek.  Although grounded in much of the theory and practice I promote and engage with, in my role as Technology …

From Records to a Web of Library Data – Pt1 Entification

Posted on by Richard Wallis

The phrase ‘getting library data into a linked data form’ hides multitude of issues. There are some obvious steps such as holding and/or outputting the data in RDF, providing resources with permanent URIs, etc. However, deriving useful library linked data from a source, such as a Marc record, requires far more than giving it a URI and encoding what you know, unchanged, as RDF triples.

Forming Consensus on Schema.org for Libraries and More

Posted on by Richard Wallis

Back in September I formed a W3C Group – Schema Bib Extend.  To quote an old friend of mine “Why did you go and do that then?”  Well, as I have mentioned before Schema.org has become a bit of a success story for structured data on the web.  I would have no hesitation in recommending it as a starting point for anyone, in any sector, wanting to share structured data on the web.  This is what OCLC did in the initial exercise to publish the 270+ million resources in WorldCat.org as Linked Data. At the same time, I believe that …

Putting WorldCat Data Into A Triple Store

Posted on by Richard Wallis

I can not really get away with making a statement like “Better still, download and install a triplestore [such as 4Store], load up the approximately 80 million triples and practice some SPARQL on them” and then not following it up. I made it in my previous post Get Yourself a Linked Data Piece of WorldCat to Play With in which I was highlighting the release of a download file containing RDF descriptions of the 1.2 million most highly held resources in WorldCat.org – to make the cut, a resource had to be held by more than 250 libraries. So here …

Get Yourself a Linked Data Piece of WorldCat to Play With

Posted on by Richard Wallis

You may remember my frustration a couple of months ago, at being in the air when OCLC announced the addition of Schema.org marked up Linked Data to all resources in WorldCat.org.   Those of you who attended the OCLC Linked Data Round Table at IFLA 2012 in Helsinki yesterday, will know that I got my own back on the folks who publish the press releases at OCLC, by announcing the next WorldCat step along the Linked Data road whilst they were still in bed. The Round Table was an excellent very interactive session with Neil Wilson from the British Library, Emmanuelle Bermes from Centre …

OCLC WorldCat Linked Data Release – Significant In Many Ways

Posted on by Richard Wallis

Typical!  Since joining OCLC as Technology Evangelist, I have been preparing myself to be one of the first to blog about the release of linked data describing the hundreds of millions of bibliographic items in WorldCat.org. So where am I when the press release hits the net?  35,000 feet above the North Atlantic heading for LAX, that’s where – life just isn’t fair. By the time I am checked in to my Anahiem hotel, ready for the ALA Conference, this will be old news.  Nevertheless it is significant news, significant in many ways. OCLC have been at the leading edge …

Richard Wallis Joins OCLC

Posted on by Richard Wallis

You may have noticed this press release Richard Wallis joins OCLC staff as Technology Evangelist today from OCLC. I have already had some feedback on this move from several people, who almost without exception, have told me that they think it is good move for both OCLC and myself. Which is good, as I agree with them 😉 I have also had several questions about it, mostly beginning with the words why or what.  My answers I thought I would share here to give some background. Why a library organisation? – I thought you were trying to move away from …