Linked Library Data Interest Group Meeting
January 22, 2012
Chairs: Corey Harper, Karen Coyle
The co-chairs welcomed the approximately 45 attendees, and pointed out the lightning talk sign-up sheets posted to the back of the room. During initial housekeeping and the circulation of the attendance sheet, 5-6 individuals signed up for lightning talks.
Introductory Presentation – Jon Voss
Jon Voss, the organizer of the initial, June 2011, Linked Open Data for Libraries Archives and Museums (LOD-LAM) Summit spoke to the group about the LOD-LAM Community (http://lod-lam.net/) and next steps as more cultural heritage institutions explore and utilize these techniques. People attended the initial Summit from around the world, and follow-up events have been held in Washington DC, London, and New Zealand. As this momentum continues to build, Jon urged the community to communicate with one another about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.
Jon discussed the need to publish proceedings from the Summit and the various follow-up activities. This summary would include information about tools for publishing and ingesting as well as information on copyright, licensing, and how to discuss LOD-LAM with institutions and gain support.
Additional next steps include fund-raising for quick implementations. World War I data was mentioned as an example possibility, and there’s been a subsequent thread about WWI linked data on the LOD-LAM list:
https://groups.google.com/group/lod-lam/browse_thread/thread/5a0c2a10059e8c1d
Jon also asked whether anyone had an archive of the #lodlam hashtag, as it was lost when Twapperkeeper discontinued archives.
Reports and Announcements
Rachel Frick, Director of DLF, mentioned that DLF is continuing to engage in linked data, and has launched an interest group:
http://www.diglib.org/community/groups/linkeddata/
Corey Harper mentioned the Codecademy’s Code Year project, and pointed the group to the listing of 70+ catalogers learning about programming through this project.
http://catcode.pbworks.com/w/page/49329140/Participants
Becky Yoose has since launched a Q&A page based on the Stack Exchange model to provide a space for the “catcode” community to work together:
http://www.libcatcode.org/
Corey announced the LOD-LAM-NYC event happening on February 23 at the New York Public Library:
http://lod-lam.net/summit/2012/01/27/lodlam-nyc/
Corey also announced the formation of a Linked Open Data interest group within the International Group of Ex Libris Users (igelu). This is hopefully the first of many vendor specific efforts to encourage library system developers to begin incorporating linked data principles into their products:
http://igelu.org/special-interests/lod
Tools and Resources Sub Group Report
Laura Akerman presented the ALA Connect prototype work to collect tools and resources about Library Linked Data: http://connect.ala.org/node/159885
Laura indicated that there are problems with using Connect to manage this kind of resource. It’s difficult to edit, requires a login, is slow to update & static and doesn’t provide a mechanism for commenting on specific tools. A variety of other options were discussed, and Rachel offered the DLF sponsored LOD-LAM Zotero Group: http://www.zotero.org/groups/lod-lam
The Tools & Resources sub-group agreed to try using the Zotero Group and to report whether this seems more manageable than the Connect page.
Lightning Talks
Robin Wendler and Suzanne Pilsk reported on the workshop at the DLF Fall Forum linked data session:
http://www.diglib.org/forums/2011forum/schedule/moving-forward-examining-the-need-to-re-tool-lams-data/
Notes from this workshop have been posted on the “LAMs Metadata” Blog:
http://lamsmetadata.blogspot.com/ They asked the group whether this Blog might have a life beyond the workshop, and whether it might be useful to the Interest Group.
Robin and Suzanne also led a discussion on outcomes of the CURATEcamp Coder / Cataloger session at DLF:
http://www.diglib.org/forums/2011forum/schedule/curatecamp-catalogers-coders/
Corine Deliot reported on the British National Bibliography linked data efforts. In August a subset of 2.6 million records were converted into over 80 million triples. Ongoing work on cleanup and remediation is now taking place. They’ve also published the RDFS classes and properties used in the published data. Next steps include refreshing the data, continuing to improve normalization and extend the data model, and begin looking at serial and multipart modeling.
Karen Coyle brought up the topic of schema.org and Microdata. A discussion covered where there were gaps in the vocabulary, who in libraries was using it, and whether it meets any of the needs emerging in the linked library data space.
Jenn Riley presented a call-to-action for libraries to ramp up efforts to become consumers of linked data. We need to be able to get data from multiple places, evaluate it, identify good data sources, and track and collect provenance information. We need a community-wide definition of what consuming linked data means and what user interfaces would look like. She pointed to the outcomes of the Stanford Linked Library Data Workshop, in particular the Technology Plan, as a good example of what we should be discussing:
http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/reports/pub152
Business Meeting
The remainder of the session was spent on a business meeting, planning for the IG’s Preconference at Annual (Friday, June 22, 8.30a-4.30p) and a call for volunteers to take over as co-chairs following the Annual meeting in Anaheim.
(Report submitted by Corey Harper to ANO, based on Corey's and Laura Akerman's notes.)
#GeneralNewsandDiscussion#meetingnotes