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LOCAH Project and Considerations of Linked Data Approaches

29th March 2011JISC Managing Research Data International Workshop, Birmingham, UK

Adrian StevensonLOCAH Project Manager

www.bath.ac.uk

“The term Linked Data refers to a set of best practices for publishing and connecting structured data on the Web.”

“the Semantic Web is the goal or end result… Linked Data provides the means to reach that goal”

From ‘Linked Data: The Story So Far’ - Heath, Bizer and Berners-Lee 2009

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The goal of Linked Data is to enable people to share structured data on the Web as easily as they can share documents today.

Bizer/Cyganiak/Heath Linked Data Tutorial, linkeddata.org

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In essence, it marks a shift in thinking from publishing data in human readable HTML documents to machine readable documents. That means that machines can do a little more of the thinking work for us.

http://www.linkeddatatools.com/semantic-web-basics

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• But haven’t we been putting linked data on the web for years?– In CSV , relational databases, XML etc?

• Well yes, but these approaches are not so easy to integrate

• Web 2.0 mashups work against a fixed set of data sources

• Linked Data applications operate on top of an unbound, global data space.

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So what’s been happening?

Data.gov.uk

Officially launched 21st January 2010

BBC Music

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A little bit of the techy stuff

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Linked Data is …

• A way of publishing data on the web that:– Encourages reuse– Reduces redundancy– Maximises inter-connectedness– Enables network effects

• So how is this achieved?

www.bath.ac.uk

Presentational tagging – HTML• <h1>Manchester Physiotherapy Centre</h1>

<p>Welcome to the Manchester Physiotherapy Centre home page. Do you feel pain? Have you had an injury? Let our staff take care of your body and soul.</p>

<h2>Consultation hours</h2> Mon 11am - 7pm<br/> Tue 11am - 7pm<br/> Wed 3pm - 7pm<br/> Thu 11am - 7pm<br/> Fri 11am - 3pm

• <p> Please note that we will not be offering consultation during the weeks of the <a href=". . .">Olympic</a> games.</p>

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Semantic tagging<company> <treatmentOffered>Physiotherapy</treatmentOffered> <companyName>Manchester Physiotherapy Centre</companyName> <staff>

<therapist>Lisa Davenport</therapist><therapist>Steve Matthews</therapist><secretary>Kelly Townsend</secretary>

</staff></company>

Linked Data Design Issues

• URIs• LD Design Issues• Triples

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

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URIs and HTTP• A ‘Uniform Resource Identifier’ (URI)

provides a simple and extensible means for identifying a resource - RFC 3986

• HTTP URIs can be ‘de-referenced’• A URL is a type of URI

• HTTP URIs are used for “real world” things• http://adrianstevenson.com/id/me• http://dbpedia.org/page/Tim_Berners-Lee

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RDF• Resource Description Framework

– a language for representing information about resources on the Web

– RDF can be used to represent things identified on the Web, even when they cannot be directly retrieved on the Web

• Describes relations using ‘triples’

• http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/

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Triples• Triples statements

– ‘Things’ have ‘properties’ with ‘values’– Subject – Predicate - Object

• Triples are the basis of RDF

ArchivalResource

Repository Provides Access To

The Rolling Stones

Keith Richards Is Member Of

BBC Music

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LOCAH Project

www.bath.ac.uk

What is the LOCAH Project?• Linked Open Copac and Archives Hub• Funded by #JiscEXPO 2/10 ‘Expose’

call• 1 year project. Started August 2010

• http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/ tag: #locah

www.bath.ac.uk

What are the Archives Hub and Copac?• National data services• The Archives Hub is an aggregation of

archival descriptions from archive repositories across the UK– http://archiveshub.ac.uk

• Copac provides access to the merged library catalogues of libraries throughout the UK, including all national libraries– http://copac.ac.uk

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What is LOCAH Doing?

• Part 1: Exposing Archives Hub & Copac data as Linked Data

• Part 2: Creating a prototype visualisation

• Part 3: Reporting on opportunities and barriers

www.bath.ac.uk

LOCAH Linked Data• If something is identified, it can be linked to• We can then take items from one dataset

and link them to items from other datasets

BBCVIAF

DBPedia Archives Hub

Copac

GeoNames

www.bath.ac.uk

BBC:Cranford

VIAF:Dickens

DBpedia: Gaskell Hub:Gaskell

Copac:Cranford

Geonames:Manchester

DBpedia: Dickens Hub:Dickens

The Linking benefits of Linked Data

ArchivalResource

Finding Aid

EAD Document

Biographical History

Agent

Family Person Place

Concept

Genre Function

Organisation

maintainedBy/maintains

origination

associatedWith

accessProvidedBy/providesAccessTo

topic/page

hasPart/partOf

hasPart/partOf

encodedAs/encodes

Repository(Agent)

Book

Place

topic/page

Language

Level

administeredBy/administers

hasBiogHist/isBiogHistFor

foaf:focus Is-a associatedWith

level

Is-a

language

ConceptScheme

inScheme

ObjectrepresentedBy

PostcodeUnit

Extent

Creation

Birth Death

extent

participates in

TemporalEntity

TemporalEntity

at time

at time

product of

in

Archives Hub Model (as at 14/2/2011)

www.bath.ac.uk

Enhancing our data• Already have some links:

– lexvo.org URIs for languages of archival materials– reference.data.gov.uk URIs for time periods– Postcodes, using both UK Postcodes URIs and Ordnance

Survey URIs – Virtual International Authority File

• Matches and links widely-used authority files - http://viaf.org/

– DBPedia• Also looking at:

– Library Congress Subject Headings

http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk/id/archivalresource/gb1086skinner

http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk/doc/person/ncarules/chamberlainarthurneville1869-1940statesman

www.bath.ac.uk

How are we creating the Visualisation Prototype?

• Based on researcher use cases• Data queried from Sparql endpoint• Use tools such as Simile, Many Eyes,

Google Charts• Also looking at custom built prototype

Use Case Slide

http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/Use_Case_LOCAH

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Visualisation Prototype• Using Timemap –

– Googlemaps and Simile

– http://code.google.com/p/timemap/

• Early stages with this• Will give location and

‘extent’ of archive.• Will link through to

Archives Hub

www.bath.ac.uk

Some issues• Data Modelling• Sustainability• Provenance• Licensing

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Data Modelling Challenges• Archival description is hierarchical and

multi-level• Archives Hub: inconsistencies in data

and lack of standardisation– there's no content standard in the UK

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Sustainability• Can you rely on data sources

long-term? • Ed Summers at the Library of

Congress createdhttp://lcsh.info

• Linked Data interface for LOC subject headings

• People started using it

Library of Congress Subject Headings

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Provenance• Triples create individual statements• OK if data ‘watermarked’

<http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk/doc/archivalresource/gb1086skinner> rdf:type foaf:Document

• But can often be a problem

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Licensing

• Nature of Linked Data: each triple as a piece of data

• ‘Ownership’ of data• Hard to track attribution• We’re using CC BY-NC 2.0 for now

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Questions?

Slides available at http://slidesha.re/fT6QIe

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Attribution and CC License • Sections of this presentation adapted from

materials created by other members of the LOCAH Project

• This presentation available under creative commons Non Commercial-Share Alike:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/