Forging Links & Breaking Shackles

The Linked Open Data BNB

Brenda YoungMetadata Systems Manager

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Linked Data & Ex Libris

2011 IGeLU conference at University of Haifa included a linked data session (See: http://igelu.org/conferences/haifa-2011/archive-of-presentations )

The Linked Open Data SIWG was

created after the event “…to achieve essential linked open data features in all Ex Libris products where appropriate, both from the data publishing, the data consuming and the data integration perspective”

Contact Lukas Koster, University of Amsterdam Library for more information

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British Library Metadata ServicesBackground

Has its roots in The British National Bibliography Ltd prior to the BL’s foundation

The BL supplies metadata to:

Increase visibility of holdings & connect users to BL content, e.g. via OCLC, COPAC etc

Participate in collaborative national & international cataloguing initiatives, e.g. ISDS, SUNCAT

Support free and priced bibliographic services

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A Changing Bibliographic Environment… Library Sector Relevance

Declining?

“I did my PhD with only 12 visits to a library. That was 5 years ago;

things have improved since then, now you don’t need to use a library

at all!”

Increasing?

“The release of library data offers the opportunity for it to be used in ways

un-thought of by the library & information community…”

New External Drivers Putting Public Sector Data To Work

The web accelerated development of a collaboration culture & fostered expectation that information should be freely available

2009 saw an increasing Government commitment to the principle of opening up public data for wider reuse

Public data will be released under open licences which enable free reuse, including commercial reuse

New External Drivers Linked Open Data

Government proposes a 5 star rating for open public data:

Available on the web (any format), with an open licence

As 1 star + available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. Excel)

As 2 star + but non-proprietary format

All the above + open standards from the World Wide Web Consortium

All the above + link your data to other people’s data to provide context

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So What Are We Doing?

Rising expectations & technical developments make it essential the BL responds

We are meeting the challenge of the new environment by:

Developing an open metadata strategy

Freely offering foundational metadata

Collaborating with the community on innovative new services (e.g. linked data) to advance understanding

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Open Metadata StrategyObjectives

Adopt a multi-threaded approach addressing the needs of:

Traditional libraries Researchers using new

metadata processing techniques

Linked data developers

Remove barriers & enable innovation without unnecessary restrictions

Migrate from library to cross-domain standards, developing solutions with users

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What Have We Achieved?

Signed over 600 organisations in 80 countries to z39.50 service

Supplied catalogue metadata in new formats under CC0 licenses e.g. the Open Library, BBC & Wikimedia Commons

Worked with Government, W3C & developers on technical, standards & licensing issues

Created a linked data version of the British National Bibliography

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Why Should We Be Interested In Linked Data?

See: http://vimeo.com/36752317

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Our Linked Data JourneyWhat to Offer?

We wanted to:

Advance debate from theory to practice via release of a ‘critical mass’ of data

Show commitment by using a large, core dataset: niche examples are not as compelling

Why BNB? A reusable dataset of published

output: not a unique institutional catalogue

Uniform format over 60 years & 3 million records in many languages

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The BNB & Linked Data Selecting Sites For Linking

To put BNB data in a wider context

We blended general linked resources:

GeoNames Lexvo RDF Book Mashup

With key linked library resources:

LCSH VIAF Dewey.info

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Collaboration

BL Metadata Services

BNB Data Catalogue Bridge

• Utilities and tools for manipulating MARC21 data

TMQ MARC Global Tools Analysts

• Bibliographic Data Analysis• MARC to RDF mapping• XSLT Conversion scripts

Production team• Match & merge• Bulk processing

Talis

Training• RDF• SPARQL

Technical Infrastructure Data Modelling

Assistance

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The BNB & Linked Data Remodelling

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MARC21 to RDF Conversion Workflow

MARC to RDF conversion Consists of multiple automated steps

• Selection• Pre-processing• Character set conversion• URI generation

Data transformation

• Selection• Pre-processing• Character set conversion• URI generation

• Selection• Pre-processing• Character set conversion• URI generation

• Data transformation

• Create & load triples

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The BNB & Linked Data Vocabularies used

Bibliographic Ontology Bio: a Vocabulary for Biographical Information British Library Terms Dublin Core Event Ontology FOAF: Friend of a Friend ISBD Org: an Organisation Ontology OWL SKOS RDF Schema WGS84 Geo Positioning

Sample data can be downloaded from: http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datasamples.html

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The BNB & Linked Data Format Conversion - MARC

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The BNB & Linked Data Format Conversion – RDF/XML

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The BNB & Linked Data Format Conversion – Triples

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Where Did We Get To?Multiple Access Routes

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BNB Books 1950-2012 3 Million Records

90 Million Unique Triples

• bnb.data.bl.uk/sparql

• thedatahub.org/dataset/bluk-bnb-basic

• thedatahub.org/dataset/bluk-bnb

• bnb.data.bl.uk/describe

• bnb.data.bl.uk/search

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Achievements

Presence & visibility

New library data model - being utilised by wider groups

New opportunities for

collaboration - with public & private sector organisations

Confirmation that valuable data

will be used – e.g. up to 8 million monthly transactions

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Lessons Learned Its a New Way of Thinking…

Give thought to data modelling & sustainability: Data wasn’t originally designed for this

Everyone is learning: you may be the best judge

There may be tools or expertise out there: don’t reinvent the wheel

Conversion inevitably identifies hidden data issues: & creates new ones!

Offer sample data for feedback: & continually improve…

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Library Linked Data Wish List? We Need More…

Tools to link library data to other resources

LMS integration of linked data options

Navigation & visualisation applications

Feedback on usage

Collaboration on shared approaches

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Next Steps?

Linked Open BNB See:http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html

Next steps:

Complete staged release

Offer monthly updates once complete

Documentation & further refinement of data model

Identify what could be offered or linked to next?

Questions?Images from