BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects

This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented

From the web of bibliographic data to the web of bibliographic meaning: structuring, interlinking and validating ontologies on the semantic web

Bibliographic data sets have revealed good levels of technical interoperability observing the principles and good practices of linked data. However, they have a low level of quality from the semantic point of view, due to many factors: lack of a common conceptual framework for a diversity of standards often used together, reduced number of links between the ontologies underlying data sets, proliferation of heterogeneous vocabularies, underuse of semantic mechanisms in data structures, "ontology hijacking" (Feeney et al., 2018), point-to-point mappings, as well as limitations of semantic web languages for the requirements of bibliographic data interoperability. After reviewing such issues, a research direction is proposed to overcome the misalignments found by means of a reference model and a superontology, using Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL) to solve current limitations of RDF languages.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other. In pursuit of those objectives, the workshop participants produced:1. a value statement addressing the question of why a Linked Data approach is worth prototyping;2. a manifesto for Linked Libraries (and Museums and Archives and …);3. an outline of the phases in a life cycle of Linked Data approaches;4. a prioritized list of known issues in generating, harvesting & using Linked Data;5. a workflow with notes for converting library bibliographic records and other academic metadata to URIs;6. examples of potential “killer apps” using Linked Data: and7. a list of next steps and potential projects.This report includes a summary of the workshop agenda, a chart showing the use of Linked Data in cultural heritage venues, and short biographies and statements from each of the participants

In the Name of the Name : RDF Literals, ER Attributes, and the Potential to Rethink the Structures and Visualizations of Catalogs

The aim of this study is to contribute to the field of machine-processable bibliographic data that is suitable for the Semantic Web. We examine the Entity Relationship (ER) model, which has been selected by IFLA as a “conceptual framework” in order to model the FR family (FRBR, FRAD, and RDA), and the problems ER causes as we move towards the Semantic Web. Subsequently, while maintaining the semantics of the aforementioned standards but rejecting the ER as a conceptual framework for bibliographic data, this paper builds on the RDF (Resource Description Framework) potential and documents how both the RDF and Linked Data’s rationale can affect the way we model bibliographic data. In this way, a new approach to bibliographic data emerges where the distinction between description and authorities is obsolete. Instead, the integration of the authorities with descriptive information becomes fundamental so that a network of correlations can be established between the entities and the names by which the entities are known. Naming is a vital issue for human cultures because names are not random sequences of characters or sounds that stand just as identifiers for the entities—they also have socio-cultural meanings and interpretations. Thus, instead of describing indivisible resources, we could describe entities that appear in a variety of names on various resources. In this study, a method is proposed to connect the names with the entities they represent and, in this way, to document the provenance of these names by connecting specific resources with specific names

HOW CONTEXT MATTERS IN DIGITAL LIBRARY USE

This research investigates how organizational context contributes to the use of digital libraries, an ICT-enabled information infrastructure. Traditionally digital-library use is measured with the help of statistical analysis of download and other related data, but statistics alone have limited power to explain how such an expensive information infrastructure is used to meet organizational goals. Such limitation was overcome in this study by relating digital-library use to the context of such use. In the last decade many Indian research organizations have witnessed the abundance of such information infrastructures accessible directly by end-users. The convergence of several phenomena such as current business models for digital resources, improved ICT infrastructure within organizations and several government interventions to help organizations have made this possible. Because of this recent change, the study was conducted in two Indian research organizations to understand how their respective contexts shape digital library use. This qualitative study used two theoretical constructs -- social actor (Lamb & Kling, 2003) and technology-in-practice (Orlikowski, 2000). The lens of social actor helped to look beyond the boundary of an organization in order to identify entities that reside in its environment and create information demands on the members of the organization. Information demands from those entities, making up organizational context, often pressure the members to use digital libraries. Consequently digital-library uses acquire various meanings depending on the nature and power position of those entities with respect to the members. The premise of the other lens used - technology-in-practice (Orlikowski, 2000) - is often for a technology use, the centrality does not lie in its technical capabilities, rather various other factors outweigh such capabilities resulting into a specific pattern of its use. In this study, this lens helped to identify several environmental, technological, organizational and personal factors that contribute to very limited use patterns of digital libraries. The study contributed to our understanding of digital library use beyond merely measuring downloaded data from database companies. It goes further to describe organizational context in terms of several components and how such components often create workplace demands resulting to digital library use. It also explains how some of the contextual aspects can outweigh the technical capabilities of digital libraries leading to certain use patterns

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

A semantic web approach for built heritage representation

In a built heritage process, meant as a structured system of activities aimed at the investigation, preservation, and management of architectural heritage, any task accomplished by the several actors involved in it is deeply influenced by the way the knowledge is represented and shared. In the current heritage practice, knowledge representation and management have shown several limitations due to the difficulty of dealing with large amount of extremely heterogeneous data. On this basis, this research aims at extending semantic web approaches and technologies to architectural heritage knowledge management in order to provide an integrated and multidisciplinary representation of the artifact and of the knowledge necessary to support any decision or any intervention and management activity. To this purpose, an ontology-based system, representing the knowledge related to the artifact and its contexts, has been developed through the formalization of domain-specific entities and relationships between them

MarcEdit for Mac and the rare books researcher

This methodological communication discusses the use of MarcEdit in a recent research project and foregrounds how a tool designed for the library community to manipulate catalogue data has been repurposed within an academic methodology. As such, it discusses solutions to the research problem generated by difficulties in outputting MARC records highlighted at CIG 2014 (Welsh, 2014) and the IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Section’s Conference A Common International Standard for Rare Materials: Why? And How? (Welsh, 2016b) and in articles published in Catalogue and Index (Welsh, 2015) and Cataloging and Classification Quarterly (Welsh, 2016a). In doing so, it suggests ways in which metadata for a particular set of rare materials – the catalogue records for the Working Library of Walter de la Mare (Senate House Library [WdlM]) – have been incorporated in the research database and thereby moved beyond Wilson’s (1968) idea of the “descriptive power” of bibliographic control to the second, greater power he defined – “exploitative power,” summarized by Smiraglia (2008, 35) as “the power of a scholar to make the best possible use of recorded knowledge,” and which I have previously argued is a larger purpose than those solely of applying international standards and creating linked data (Welsh, 2016a)

Volume 34, Number 2, June 2014 OLAC Newsletter

Digitized June 2014 issue of the OLAC Newsletter