LCSH, SKOS and Linked Data

A technique for converting Library of Congress Subject Headings MARCXML to Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) RDF is described. Strengths of the SKOS vocabulary are highlighted, as well as possible points for extension, and the integration of other semantic web vocabularies such as Dublin Core. An application for making the vocabulary available as linked-data on the Web is also described.Comment: Submission for the Dublin Core 2008 conference in Berli

Metadata Visualization of Cultural Heritage Information within a Collaborative Environment

Cultural content on the Web is available in various domains (cultural objects, datasets, geospatial data, moving images, scholarly texts and visual resources), concerns various topics, is written in different languages, targeted to both laymen and experts, and provided by different communities (libraries, archives museums and information industry) and individuals (Figure 1). The integration of information technologies and cultural heritage content on the Web is expected to have an impact on everyday life from the point of view of institutions, communities and individuals. In particular, collaborative environment scan recreate 3D navigable worlds that can offer new insights into our cultural heritage (Chan 2007). However, the main barrier is to find and relate cultural heritage information by end-users of cultural contents, as well as by organisations and communities managing and producing them. In this paper, we explore several visualisation techniques for supporting cultural interfaces, where the role of metadata is essential for supporting the search and communication among end-users (Figure 2). A conceptual framework was developed to integrate the data, purpose, technology, impact, and form components of a collaborative environment, Our preliminary results show that collaborative environments can help with cultural heritage information sharing and communication tasks because of the way in which they provide a visual context to end-users. They can be regarded as distributed virtual reality systems that offer graphically realised, potentially infinite, digital information landscapes. Moreover, collaborative environments also provide a new way of interaction between an end-user and a cultural heritage data set. Finally, the visualisation of metadata of a dataset plays an important role in helping end-users in their search for heritage contents on the Web

Investigating the feasibility of a distributed, mapping-based, approach to solving subject interoperability problems in a multi-scheme, cross-service, retrieval environment

The HILT project is researching the problems of facilitating interoperability of subject descriptions in a distributed multi-scheme environment. HILT Phase I found a UK community consensus in favour of utilising an inter-scheme mapping service to improve interoperability. HILT Phase II investigated the approach by building a pilot server, and identified a range of issues that would have to be tackled if an operational service was to be successful. HILT Phase III will implement a centralised version of an M2M pilot, but will aim to design it so that the possibility of a move to a distributed service remains open. This aim will impact on likely future research concerns in Phase III and beyond. Wide adoption of a distributed approach to the problem could lead to the creation of a framework within which regional, national, and international efforts in the area can be harmonised and co-ordinated

Using Linked Data to Mitigate Colonial Subject Bias

This presentation is inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Report and Recommendations released by the Canadian Federation of Library Associations in April 2017. With a focus on the “decolonization of library access and classification” in relation to the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) it presents the term circle as a way to mitigate colonial biases by creating a hybrid subject language system using SKOS RDF/XML in a linked data context. This hybrid system facilitates Indigenous community participation in the control and development of subject metadata and suggests a new role for metadata

Linked Data for the Real World: Leveraging Metadata for Cataloging

Will the promise of linked data actually save us time? How will catalogers and machines work together to streamline recording of data and authority maintenance work, allowing catalogers and metadata practitioners to focus more on data stewardship and less on being data scribes? Will Real World Objects (RWOs) and linked data help bridge the gap between traditional cataloging and the larger semantic web communities of practice, ensuring that library metadata supports our users’ search behaviors, those FRBR User Tasks? Or will it just provide more maintenance work down the road? This session will explore the potential of linked data and RWOs through examples and case studies

E-resource management and the Semantic Web : applications of RDF for e-resource discovery

Semantic Web technologies and specifications are increasingly finding applications within digital libraries and other e-resource contexts. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an introduction to some essential Semantic Web concepts and the resource description framework (RDF), a key enabling language of the Semantic Web. Applications of RDF including Dublin Core, FOAF, SKOS and RDFa will be explored with practical examples, and recent implementations of these specifications within a variety of e-resource discovery contexts will be discussed

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) in the Semantic Web: A Multi-Dimensional Review

Since the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification and its SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL) became formal W3C recommendations in 2009 a significant number of conventional knowledge organization systems (KOS) (including thesauri, classification schemes, name authorities, and lists of codes and terms, produced before the arrival of the ontology-wave) have made their journeys to join the Semantic Web mainstream. This paper uses "LOD KOS" as an umbrella term to refer to all of the value vocabularies and lightweight ontologies within the Semantic Web framework. The paper provides an overview of what the LOD KOS movement has brought to various communities and users. These are not limited to the colonies of the value vocabulary constructors and providers, nor the catalogers and indexers who have a long history of applying the vocabularies to their products. The LOD dataset producers and LOD service providers, the information architects and interface designers, and researchers in sciences and humanities, are also direct beneficiaries of LOD KOS. The paper examines a set of the collected cases (experimental or in real applications) and aims to find the usages of LOD KOS in order to share the practices and ideas among communities and users. Through the viewpoints of a number of different user groups, the functions of LOD KOS are examined from multiple dimensions. This paper focuses on the LOD dataset producers, vocabulary producers, and researchers (as end-users of KOS).Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, accepted paper in International Journal on Digital Librarie

The future of metadata: open, linked, and multilingual – the YSO case

Peer reviewe

HILT : High-Level Thesaurus Project. Phase IV and Embedding Project Extension : Final Report

Ensuring that Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) users of the JISC IE can find appropriate learning, research and information resources by subject search and browse in an environment where most national and institutional service providers - usually for very good local reasons - use different subject schemes to describe their resources is a major challenge facing the JISC domain (and, indeed, other domains beyond JISC). Encouraging the use of standard terminologies in some services (institutional repositories, for example) is a related challenge. Under the auspices of the HILT project, JISC has been investigating mechanisms to assist the community with this problem through a JISC Shared Infrastructure Service that would help optimise the value obtained from expenditure on content and services by facilitating subject-search-based resource sharing to benefit users in the learning and research communities. The project has been through a number of phases, with work from earlier phases reported, both in published work elsewhere, and in project reports (see the project website: http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/). HILT Phase IV had two elements - the core project, whose focus was 'to research, investigate and develop pilot solutions for problems pertaining to cross-searching multi-subject scheme information environments, as well as providing a variety of other terminological searching aids', and a short extension to encompass the pilot embedding of routines to interact with HILT M2M services in the user interfaces of various information services serving the JISC community. Both elements contributed to the developments summarised in this report