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The project LODZ (Linked Open Data Zurich) adopts an experimental approach to merge data and develop a semantic web infrastructure to enable its discovery. For this purpose, three institutions in the field of art and design provided their metadata. The project cycle followed six steps: team building, gathering and cleaning of the original data, modelling, transforming, interlinking and exploration of the Linked Data set. The resulting pilot application offers innovative and attractive features based on the capability of the Linked Data, with the aim to provide a better user experience. The major challenge of this project was the creation of links between the internal datasets, and with external sources. An important lesson learnt is therefore to focus more on the interoperability of data at the time of cataloguing in the original databases, for example by integrating external identifiers rather than just terms in the form of strings.
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187
Art and design as linked data: the LODZ
project (Linked Open Data Zurich)
Nicolas Prongué, nicolas.prongue@hesge.ch
University of Applied Sciences HEG Geneva, Switzerland
Fabio Ricci, fabio.ricci@semweb.ch
Semweb LLC, Küsnacht, Switzerland
René Schneider, rene.schneider@hesge.ch
University of Applied Sciences HEG Geneva, Switzerland
René Schurte, rene.schurte@zb.uzh.ch
Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland
Libellarium, IX, 2 (2016): 187 – 202.
UDK: 029.49:004=111; 7.025: 004.62=111
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15291/libellarium.v9i2.256
Research paper
Abstract
The project LODZ (Linked Open Data Zurich) adopts an experimental approach
to merge data and develop a semantic web infrastructure to enable its discovery.
For this purpose, three institutions in the field of art and design provided
their metadata. The project cycle followed six steps: team building, gathering
and cleaning of the original data, modelling, transforming, interlinking and
exploration of the Linked Data set. The resulting pilot application offers
innovative and attractive features based on the capability of the Linked Data,
with the aim to provide a better user experience.
The major challenge of this project was the creation of links between the internal
datasets, and with external sources. An important lesson learnt is therefore to
focus more on the interoperability of data at the time of cataloguing in the
original databases, for example by integrating external identifiers rather than
just terms in the form of strings.
KEYWORDS: application, cultural data, linked data, semantic web
Introduction
Background
For centuries the cultural institutions of our societies gathered objects and
created high quality metadata to describe them. These objects were mainly
collected in and for the public sector, i.e. in libraries, archives and museums, by
creating their own informational universe. Specific formats, specific cataloguing
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Nicolas Prongué, Fabio Ricci, René Schneider, René Schurte, Art and design as linked data: the LODZ project (Linked Open Data Zurich) Libellarium, IX, 2 (2016): 187 – 202
rules, specific protocols and specific data models were developed in each
area, making it easy to exchange data within this area, but difficult to use and
understand by external systems. The most glaring example of this dichotomy
is that of libraries, with their complex MARC format, the Z39.50 protocol and
the AACR2 rules (Bermès 2013).
Besides that, the modern digital society has gone and is still going through
several revolutionary and evolutionary transformations that have not stopped
outside the doors of the institutions mentioned above. Data were first recorded
on paper, then digitized and later structured and stored in databases. Finally, the
disruptive fracture caused by the emergence of the World Wide Web has led to
a new paradigm: the automatic exchange of information, beyond the borders
of a closed system. Data were consequently serialized in XML and nowadays,
for the purpose of interlinking, converted according to the standards of the
semantic web or better Linked Open Data, defined as data published using the
Resource Description Framework (RDF) (Coyle 2016).
Linked Data also became a W3C standard, i.e. that each statement is made in a
triple structure composed of a subject, a predicate and an object. The resources
are identified by HTTP URI and linked with external data. They are often coupled
with an open licence, turning them into Linked Open Data (Berners-Lee 2010,
Europeana 2015). Since its standardisation in 2004, the semantic web has
expanded to form a huge data cloud of more than one thousand datasets,
interlinked around an important node, the DBpedia dataset (Schmachtenberg,
Bizer and Paulheim 2014).
The web user requirements are increasingly high: online data services have to
offer more serendipity and have to be visible outside of their closed institutional
environment. Interlinking the data through the RDF standards is a potential
answer to these needs, nevertheless, it also represents a significant technical
challenge; indeed, it implies various tasks that still nowadays are considered
complex, like the full automation of data processing, the attribution of persistent
identifiers or the quality assessment (Bensmann 2016). These challenges are
exacerbated by problems concerning legacy data and legacy systems, especially
in public institutions.
Due to the fact that cultural data is mainly kept in public institutions as mentioned
in the initial sentences of this paper, the Linked Data movement opens a road
to libraries, archives, and museums toward the convergence and reshaping of
their cultural data.
Related works
Libraries are the most advanced public institutions in this area. Some of them
have made their data available in RDF via web services (API) or dump, but only
a few of them have already created a Linked Data application for the end user.
Among them is the French National Library and its project data.bnf.fr with the
aim of merging various internal datasets, interlinking them with each other
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and providing a search interface based on the RDF framework. The resulting
product has become one of the most advanced semantic web applications in
libraries, presenting a clear evolution compared to traditional library catalogues:
FRBR-structured data, new easy-to-use features and design patterns based on
enriched data, links to external datasets as well as data openness with download
possibilities (BNF 2016).
In the area of digital libraries, some initiatives have resulted in successful Linked
Data applications. Europeana developed an RDF-based model, which enables
a unified representation of digital objects gathered from heterogeneous data
providers. The Europeana Data Model distinguishes the cultural heritage object
from its online representations and its metadata (Charles 2016). Based on this
framework, the website Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek of the German National
Library is a working application which proposes interesting Linked Data features,
like pages for persons with links to other external datasets (Wikidata, ISNI, Library
of Congress, etc.).
Other projects have been more focussed on cross-domain contents from GLAM
institutions (galleries, libraries, archives and museums). Kulttuurisampo merges
and links all kind of GLAM data (objects, texts, pictures, places, etc.) from all
over Finland, and provides it through a single web interface (Mäkelä, Hyvönen
and Ruotsalo 2012). Significant efforts have been made in the creation of new
functionalities to explore the RDF graph, breaking away from the paradigm of
the traditional search engine with a search bar and a results page. In this context,
it must be mentioned that an ordinary web user may not be able to benefit from
all these advanced functionalities without assistance.
In France, the creation of the new website for the Centre Pompidou followed the
same approach at a smaller scale, within a single institution. Combining data
from the library, the archive, and the museum as well as other in-house data,
the information has been remodelled in RDF around core concepts that appear
in all data sources, such as events and people (Dalbin et al. 2011). The website
presents original interlinked contents, such as works of art, online educational
dossiers or even products of the museum shop, in a very user-friendly interface.
These examples show the search of a different, in the ideal case better user
experience, by providing well-interconnected information and mash-up services
on the web. However, such mature projects need the firm and consistent
investment of a large institution to ensure stability, durability, and sustainability.
The LODZ project
The project LODZ (Linked Open Data Zurich), launched in Switzerland in the
spring of 2015, adopts an experimental approach to merge data around art
and design. The aim of the project was firstly to get a thorough overview of
the convergence of cultural metadata and their conversion to Linked Data, in
order to determine a common workflow for data transformation. Secondly,
this knowledge was applied to a concrete situation, mostly to gain practical
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experience, by the development of a pilot application which merges and
interlinks heterogeneous datasets in RDF and proposes innovative search
features to explore the data. As quite a lot of mash-up services are primarily
interested in specialized datasets of a particular field (Hügi and Prongué 2014),
we decided to focus on the subject of art and design in the city and canton of
Zurich, Switzerland.
The city of Zurich and its surrounding areas are a centre of international art trade
and also a historical site in the history of art (as, e.g., the Dada movement that
emerged in Zurich exactly a century ago, in 1916). The city has many important
galleries and art institutions as, e.g., the Kunsthaus Zürich. Important works of
art with their corresponding metadata are assembled in collections affiliated to
public institutions. As is often the case in the federal structure of Switzerland,
the governance of these institutions is manifold. Some are funded by the canton
(as the University of Zurich), the Swiss Federation (as the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology with important collections of, e.g., graphic material), or by public
or private foundations. Each institutions collection has its separate tradition of
cataloguing and the different institutions have only recently started to intensify
their cooperation.
From this point of view, the field of art and design in the city and canton of Zurich
was a fitting example to test the benefits of the Linked Data approach. We chose
several institutions willing to participate in the project, namely the Collection
of Graphic Materials of the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, the Swiss Institute for Art
Research with its online database of Swiss arts as well as two datasets from
the Zurich University of the Arts, namely its Media Archive and the database
hosted by the Museum of Design which supplied their datasets with reference
to Zurich to the project.
These four collections are heterogeneous in two different aspects: they cover
different fields of art and design and their databases are technically diverse. The
core areas of the collections are as follows:
The Swiss Institute for Art Research (Schweizerisches Institut für
Kunstwissenschaft) is a research institute on Swiss art based in Zurich.
It maintains varying online sources, among them SIKART1, an online
encyclopaedia on Swiss art.
The Collection of Graphic Materials2 at Zentralbibliothek Zürich
(Graphische Sammlung der Zentralbibliothek Zürich) is an art collection
with focus on local and cultural history of Zurich, containing over one
million items from the 15th century onwards.
1 Website: http://www.sikart.ch
2 Website: http://www.zb.uzh.ch/spezialsammlungen/graphische-sammlung/index.html.de
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The Media Archive3 of the Zurich University of the Arts (Medienarchiv
der Künste der Zürcher Hochschule der Künste) is a database for the
students and faculty of the University, which allows them to archive
and share different kinds of material for collaborative creative work.
The eMuseum4 of the Zurich University of the Arts is the electronic
archive of the University of the Arts as well as of its well-known
Museum of Design (Museum für Gestaltung Zürich). It contains, i.a., a
substantial collection of posters.
These four heterogeneous datasets were ideal material to test the Linked Data
approach with its potential to unite search results of heterogeneous data,
regardless of their technical form and their thematic background, enabling
serendipitous output. The goal of our project and of the search application was
to present search results on themes common to the four collections, regardless
of their different focus. With such an application, it is possible to find information
about a motif, an art technique or material in established Swiss art, a local
historical collection, on historical posters and in works of contemporary students
of art with only one request. We started on a smaller scale with representative
datasets to gather experience with Linked Data in order to develop semantic
features that did not exist so far on other websites.
Since the focus of the project was on the process and not on the outcome, the
pilot application presented below is mainly a prototype aiming to demonstrate
the benefits of Linked Data, not a definitive product.
Methods
The development of a pilot application, which proposes innovative search
features to explore the cultural data merged in RDF from different repositories,
followed an approach inspired by the methods adopted in various other data
conversion projects. In the domain of libraries and Linked Data, the workflows
of the National Library of Spain and the LIBRIS network in Sweden, among
others, are particularly relevant (HEG Genève 2015). Built on this basis, our own
approach followed six – not necessarily consecutive – steps, which are detailed
below: team building, gathering and cleaning of the original data, modelling
the data, transforming, interlinking and exploration of the Linked Data set.
1. Team building
The project team comprised partners from very different sectors: the Haute école
de gestion de Genève as an academic partner, the Zentralbibliothek Zürich from
the public and Semweb LLC from the private sector, the latter being a company
specialized in semantic web technologies. The team was then enlarged by data
3 Website: http://medienarchiv.zhdk.ch/
4 Website: http://www.emuseum.ch/
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Nicolas Prongué, Fabio Ricci, René Schneider, René Schurte, Art and design as linked data: the LODZ project (Linked Open Data Zurich) Libellarium, IX, 2 (2016): 187 – 202
suppliers, with the Zentralbibliothek Zürich contributing its own collection
of graphic materials; further data were provided by two other institutions, as
mentioned in the previous sections, namely the Swiss Institute for Art Research
and the Zurich University of the Arts.
As this step has no technical aspects, it might appear as a relatively easy and
quick procedure. Nevertheless, the challenges are quite significant, and are
located at management level. To ensure a successful development of the project,
a letter of agreement had to be drawn up in collaboration with the partners
and data providers. The latter committed themselves to provide the data, thus
providing an indispensable prerequisite for the project. The agreement also
outlines which data are concerned, over what period of time and under which
conditions of use.
In this context, building a team also meant clarification of roles and responsibilities:
for each data set, one person was assigned to take technical responsibility and
another person to coordinate all activities. This point was decisive for the next
step, namely the gathering and cleaning of the original data, which required
an intensive communication between the various actors.
2. Gathering and cleaning of the original data
No project dealing with Linked Data can advance without transformation of data.
This fact is as simple as it is decisive and far from trivial. To make this process
succeed, a strict deadline was communicated to all participants right from the
start. Although some participants had no prior experience with extracting and
delivering a whole database or parts of it, all data were submitted according
to the deadline set after a close and intensive dialogue between the system
developer and the data providers. To avoid delays, the developers accepted data
in various formats. In our case the data from the four databases were delivered
in four different formats, namely MARCXML, CSV, XSLX and JSON-LD, making it
necessary to further process them to make them convertible.
3. Data modelling
The modelling task implies a detailed and comparative analysis of the available
data, and especially the identification of the common fields – possibly with
different labels – in all four databases. In order to start the process of interlinking
every database with each other, some specific aspects have been evaluated:
the quantity of records, the type of entities described (works, people, etc.), the
geographic and temporal coverage as well as the precise thematic area of the
data. Controlled fields have been listed and compared; as the range of possible
values is limited in these fields, a manual interlinking process would be less
time-intensive and may be envisaged.
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Figure 1. Temporal coverage of the four databases
This step led to the identification of significant divergences between the datasets
that restrict the possibilities of interlinking (Figure 1). Indeed, the creation of
links is quite difficult for databases with very different time spans covered.
For that reason, considerations about potential use cases for the prototype
application already started at an early stage, in order to determine on which
aspect the interlinking efforts should focus. Results of this analysis showed that
the interconnections should focus neither on persons and exhibitions (they
are time-period-dependent), nor on places (the project already being limited
to the canton of Zurich), but on general topics of interest and material types of
the described resources. Further information regarding this aspect are given in
section “5. Interlinking”.
Next, the modelling phase required the mapping of every relevant field in the
four databases with an RDF property, to finally achieve a single homogeneous
RDF model with the most detailed granularity possible. This model is illustrated
in Figure 2: the two blue ovals represent the entities of interest (the subjects
of our triples to be created), the arrows stand for the properties (predicates
of the triples), the grey rectangles are the values in a string form (objects of
the triples) and the violet ovals the values in a HTTP-URI form (being also
objects of the triples). In addition to these labels, it is indicated, next to each
object, in which of the four databases this value is available. Indeed, the RDF
structure is flexible enough to contain a specific property only for some of the
resources; for instance, the property dct:publisher” is defined only for the works
resources of the Collection of Graphic Materials. Overall the model points out
where similarities between the datasets are to be found and where exactly
interoperability could be achieved. Finally, a consistent internal schema of
identifiers was designed for the subjects, i.e. the resources of the LODZ project.
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Figure 2. LODZ data model
The RDF vocabularies were chosen according to the domain of the data (works
of art and documents) and their popularity on the web. Thus, the following
vocabularies were used: Dublin Core (dc/dct), Resource Description and Access
- unconstrained (rdau), Schema.org (schema), Europeana Data Model (edm),
CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (crm), Friend of a Friend (foaf) and GND
Ontology (gnd). An additional property was defined in a small ontology created
only for this project, to express the place of origin of a person: “lodz:placeOfOrigin”.
4. Data transformation
The fourth step, the data transformation itself, implied the setting up of a
suitable infrastructure, containing an SQL/RDF mapper, tools for data analysis
and conversion, and an RDF store. As some parts of the datasets were delivered
in MARCXML format, they were directly converted to RDF using Metafacture, a
tool designed exactly for the proper conversion of bibliographical data into RDF.
The other datasets were delivered mainly as relational data and were therefore
converted to RDF using a Sesame based SQL/RDF mapper developed ad-hoc
by Semweb LLC.
Once the transformation infrastructure had been established, it was used to
convert the data according to the model defined by the project team: for each
data field in the four databases, a transformation rule was defined, either in
the SQL/RDF mapper or in Metafacture, and tested on a sample of records. This
transformation process is highly iterative, requiring many tests and corrections
that sometimes have to be executed throughout the entire project lifecycle,
depending heavily on all data requirements that are discovered during each
and every step of the project.
5. Interlinking
The unambiguous linkage of all datasets, the so-called interlinking process, may
be considered to be the project’s biggest challenge. The work done during
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this stage was based on the same technical infrastructure as that used for data
transformation.
The modelling phase made clear that these interconnections should focus on
common characteristics in the four databases, especially the topics or subjects
related to the resources and the material types.
To handle the topics, two thesauri were chosen: the GETTY AAT (Art & Architecture
Thesaurus), mainly composed of entries in English, and the thesaurus created
for the eMuseum at the Zurich University of the Arts, with all entries in German.
While the GETTY AAT is already available as Linked Data, the thesaurus of the
eMuseum had to be modelled and converted in RDF for the purpose of its
integration into the application. This was managed using the SKOS vocabulary,
a widely used semantic web ontology for the representation of knowledge
organisation systems. Besides this, a module which tokenizes the search
term(s) – usually a short phrase – into a list of nouns together with their stems
was developed. This module allows one to use these two thesauri as a hub to
cover information spread in all of the four data sources. To do so, the module
subsequently goes through the list of all tokenized search terms to find on the
fly the corresponding matches in the thesauri. Hence, the two thesauri adopt a
hub function between the heterogeneous records enabling the user to reach all
linked entities with a simple query entered as free text and to navigate among
the Linked Data thesaurus.
Another interlinking operation was realized for the material types. In this case
the connections were done manually by an information specialist. This operation
is made possible due to a limited range of expected values in these fields. It
ensures a better link quality than that an automated process would guarantee.
The material types were linked with materials or contents from the GETTY AAT.
This relation appears in the model under the property schema:genre. Table 1
illustrates the manual interlinking operations with one AAT identifier for the
concept of photography; many different terms represent these same concepts
in the four data sources.
Table 1. All material types that have been manually matched with one single GETTY AAT identifier
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6. Exploration of the Linked Data set
The sixth and last step concerned the exploration of the Linked Data. One
objective of the LODZ project was to create a pilot application that proposes
innovative search features using added semantic knowledge to explore the data.
This step is based closely on the preceding ones. Due to some requirements
on the data, the model and the transformation had to be reworked in order to
output data that fits the needs of the application.
The result of this phase is a user interface, basically a search engine, that
1. offers a homogeneous access to the selected data resources on art and
design in connection with the city and canton of Zurich,
2. provides flexible exploratory search options to the user by making
use of the thesaurus relations in order to expand or limit the query,
3. allows a simplified user experience by presenting the added value of
Linked Data with an aesthetically appealing visual design.
Particular attention was drawn to the usability of the application, balancing
between the possible complexity of innovative search features and the required
simplicity of current interfaces, due to the variety of access devices. Therefore,
the usability was tested within the project team during a session dedicated to
running a heuristic evaluation. Various wireframes were elaborated to conceive
and preview the new features which were then implemented.
For the sake of a deeper technical understanding, some short explanations
concerning the computer infrastructure are also given: the server implementation
was realized using Java/Tomcat for the server side and Javascript/jQuery for
the client side. The ad hoc developed Sesame based SQL/RDF mapper was
realized based on MySQL(™) and Blazegraph(™). The homogenized RDF datasets
were integrated in a state-of-the-art triple store, hosted and operated on a
Blazegraph(™) repository by Semweb LLC.
The application itself is described in detail in the following section.
Results
A tangible outcome of the LODZ project is a prototype application for art and
design in Zurich, named ZHART (where “ZH” stand for Zurich). One particular
objective was to develop a mash-up service on the application level to explore
the added value of the resulting Linked Data. This was realized through four
aspects visible on the interface as detailed below: the search entry points, the
search engine results page, the thesaurus supported searching and the landing
pages.
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Search entry points
On the entry page of the system the user can trigger a query by two different
means (Figure 3): first, as common in all search engines, a simple search window
can be used, by entering a free-text query. Alternatively, a tag cloud can be used
to start a query with a given single-word-request. In an attractive layout, this
tag cloud shows only the terms that are most frequently used within the four
datasets. This enables the user to explore the content of the application instead
of defining a premeditated query, thus allowing more serendipity.
Figure 3. Homepage with two search entry points
Using the search field as well as clicking on one of the tags will lead to a search
engine results page (SERP).
Search engine results page
After having triggered a search action, the interface is divided into a left and a
right pane (Figure 4). The left section shows the matches found in the thesauri
regarding the main search terms (see next section). The right section shows a
list of results found in the index built on top of the triple store.
Figure 4. Search engine results page
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The upper area of the right section shows a faceted navigation tab in which
each facet indicates the exact distribution of the search term in the metadata
fields. Those tabs, computed on the fly, can be used in the further search process,
to refine the results list. As different datasets have been merged, the facets
illustrate the data mapping with common RDF properties and contribute to
more transparency for the search process.
The lower area of the right section shows a number of entities matched by
the term(s) given in the search. As defined in the model (Figure 2), the two
main entities of interest are work and person. Therefore, a result item is not
necessarily a work, it can also represent a person. This is quite a novelty since in
traditional library interfaces persons are not shown as such in the results. This
change illustrates well how monolithic bibliographical records are broken up
into different RDF concepts, allowing the retrieval engine to search rather on
entities than on records. This progress is made possible through the RDF model
and could be, in a future phase, extended to other concepts such as location
or event.
In the SERP, further navigation can be done either by activating the pagination
symbols (scrolling) or by clicking on one entity, showing an individual display.
Thesaurus-supported searching
It is often said that RDF adds semantics to data. This added value was tested in
another explicit search feature taking the form of a thesaurus-supported search
functionality, as can be seen in the left section of the results page. Starting from
the search query, it looks for matches in the GETTY AAT and eMuseum thesaurus,
named simply GETTY and ZHdK (acronym of the Zurich University of the Arts)
in the interface.
Once more, this feature was created to enhance the serendipity of the end
user by proposing new or adjacent keywords for exploration, based on the
experience made in “RODIN”, a previous project of the Haute école de gestion
de Genève (Belmonte et al. 2012). Consequently, the thesauri panel allows the
user to explore related, narrower or broader terms. Each matched concept in one
thesaurus is bound to further concepts which are shown together in a unique
list for each of the relations “broader”, “narrower” or “related”.
Landing page
Every entity in the data, be it a work or a person, has its own landing page that
can be accessed via the results set. For a work, the landing page contains the
following information: a thumbnail, a link to the picture in full resolution on
the provider’s website, the usual metadata for this work as well as a link to the
author’s landing page (if available). The landing page for the artist shows data
describing the person’s profile, e.g. his/her birth date, the field of activity and/
or his/her nationality as well as a list of all his/her works available in ZHART
(Figure 5).
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Figure 5. Landing page with the profile of an artist and his works
Concluding discussion
The project Linked Open Data Zurich (LODZ) was realized on a small scale in
order to gain experience with a concrete use case and existing data. The main
goal was a) to present a proof of concept to integrate data with heterogeneous
technical formats and b) to acquire skills to achieve this goal in the most efficient
way. The creation of a stable and publicly available application would have
required much greater resources, hence it was clear from the beginning that
the outcome of LODZ should be considered as a prototype application and the
basis for further decisions made by the project’s principal stakeholders.
The four original datasets of the project come from very different institutions: a
museum, a city and cantonal library, a university library and an art foundation.
Besides that, the composition of the project team was quite diverse with
partners from public, academic and commercial backgrounds. It was therefore
not trivial to find a common language, especially for all questions concerning
metadata management. This meant that the participants had to invest more
time in communication and coordination aspects than expected. For that reason,
the decision was taken to impose only a minimum of requirements for data
delivery, although this subsequently required increased effort to standardise
the heterogeneous data received.
This scale of diversity can be illustrated by the circa 30 different date formats that
were found in the delivered data and the consequent effort required to match
them. Without doubt, a more stringent control at the stage of the data delivery
at the various institutions, conducted by information professionals, would have
benefited the project, especially for some specific data fields such as the date.
Prior decisions on this matter would also have allowed the creation of reusable
automatic data validation tools.
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Nevertheless, the most important challenge was the creation of links between
the four datasets, and with external sources. This challenge has had some impact
upon the resulting application, which offers fewer features with a semantic
added value than expected. The interlinking possibilities were limited as the
datasets were heterogeneous and had been created without prior consideration
of common standards. To overcome these limitations, the choice was made to
use a unique, generic thesaurus to create a bridge between the datasets and
enable a single search entry point.
Another complementary approach to overcome this problem focused on
manual interlinking, which required the collection of statistical information
about the frequency of a particular field, and then about the half-normalised
values within this field. This work was done on all four databases to enable a
matching of the most frequent values towards a common reference dataset
(in this case the GETTY AAT). Doing this manually is time-intensive and such
a method cannot be taken into consideration for regular data updates; in this
case, this work would have to be repeated regularly, which is not feasible. To
prevent this inconvenience, the work of cataloguing in the original databases
should focus more on the interoperability of data, for example by integrating
external identifiers for persons or places rather than just terms in the form of
strings. The potential of small Linked Data projects could thus be extended by
such adaptations on the original data.
This may nevertheless imply, in some cases, new workflows of cataloguing and
even new metadata management software products. As a consequence, the
development of a Linked Data application would then be less time-consuming
by leveraging the basic data quality, making it fit for interlinking, allowing instead
a focus on adding new features, based on data enrichment and inferences.
The development of new search features is especially relevant in the field of
art and design, where the creativity plays an important role. Do persons in this
domain need a tool with exact and precise search functionalities, or rather a
tool supporting inspiration? A hypothesis is that a particularly ludic interface,
offering different or greater serendipity – possibly based on Linked Data – would
benefit those working in a creative environment. This could be a subject for
further research.
From a more pragmatic perspective, a better interoperability in the original data
combined with the flexibility of the RDF model is a promising baseline for new
applications that merge heterogeneous datasets. It enables work directly at the
level of application with basis data, the latter being managed at a local level.
This advantage represents a great potential, especially for small datasets, the
management of which cannot be delegated to a higher level and also lacks
visibility, allowing the GLAM community to work more closely together towards
a convergence of cultural metadata.
201
Nicolas Prongué, Fabio Ricci, René Schneider, René Schurte, Art and design as linked data: the LODZ project (Linked Open Data Zurich) Libellarium, IX, 2 (2016): 187 – 202
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... Since the situation described above can only be improved through collaboration and partnership, ICOPAD started as a joint project between four Swiss institutions (namely the HEG-Genève as instigator and managing authority; the Swiss Institute for Cultural Sciences, the Swiss Institute for Art Research, the Zurich Central Library as well as the Zurich University of the Arts). All institutions worked together successfully in a previous project on Linked Data for Art and Design in Zurich (LOD-Z) 7 (Prongue, Ricci, Schneider and Schurte, 2017). This project ended with the development of a prototypical system and the desire to further work on PIDs to loosen the dependency from cool URIs. ...
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In this paper we report on efforts to enhance the Swiss persistent identifier (PID) ecosystem. We will firstly describe the current situation and the need for improvement in order to describe in full detail the steps undertaken to create a Swiss-wide model. A case study was undertaken by using several data sets from the domains of art and design in the context of the ICOPAD project. We will provide a set of recommendations to enable a PID service that could mint Archival Resource Key (ARK) identifiers or a flavour of Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) as complement to Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). We will conclude with some remarks concerning the transferability of this approach to other areas and the requirements for a national hub for PID management in Switzerland.
... 58 Slična se stvar, ali, dakako, u domeni informacijskih ustanova, izvodi na projetku LODZ 59 (Linked Open Data Zürich) u Zürichu, gdje se eksperimentira s metapodacima iz heterogenih zbirki triju ustanova -Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Swiss Institute for Art Research te Zürich University of Arts. 60 Bit tog projekta jest integracija metapodataka iz različitih ustanova na području grada i Kantona Zürich, a koje se tiču umjetnosti i dizajna. Konačan proizvod jest pilot-aplikacija utemeljena na mogućnostima tehnologije povezanih podataka s ciljem što kvalitetnijeg korisničkog iskustva. ...
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Cilj. Rad daje kratak pregled prirode bibliografskih zapisa kroz povijest, od zapisa ručno ili strojno ispisanih na listiću pa do onih izrađenih u okruženju semantičkog weba. Pristup. Na osnovi pregleda literature stječe se uvid u mogućnosti koje su zapisi imali u doba kataložnih listića te one koje imaju tijekom aktualnog elektroničkog doba, u čijoj suvremenoj fazi do izražaja može doći njihov veći potencijal. Rezultati. Na presjeku pregleda literature i razmatranja aktualnih svjetskih primjera dobre prakse primijećena je nužnost napuštanja tradicionalnih načina katalogiziranja, osuvremenjivanja kataložnih pravilnika, razvijanja jedinstvene metapodatkovne infra-strukture te institucionalne suradnje u vidu međusobne razmjene metapodataka. Tako-đer je primijećena nužnost sinteze knjižničnih kataloga i komercijalnih web-tražilica u svrhu izgradnje relevantnog informacijskog univerzuma.
Conference Paper
The motivation for publishing data as Open Data and its benefits are already clear to many public authorities. However, most of open data is published as 3* data classified using the 5-star deployment scheme. When it comes to publishing data as 5* data, i.e. as Linked Open Data (LOD), for many authorities the benefits and motivation become abstract and unclear. In this paper, we introduce a playground which clarifies these benefits to public authorities in the Czech Republic using their own datasets. The playground consists of 73 real datasets transformed to LOD and two mature tools for LOD processing, visualization and analysis. We demonstrate the benefits on two concrete datasets provided by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic. We show how other public authorities may perform a similar demonstration on their own datasets. The paper is by no means limited to public authorities of the Czech Republic, as the same principles and processes are applicable everywhere else. Our example can be used to demonstrate the benefits of publishing 5* data on real datasets, and as a motivation and guidelines for building a similar playground for other countries.
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Full-text available
This paper presents the CultureSampo system from the viewpoint of publishing heterogeneous linked data as a service. Discussed are the problems of converting legacy data into linked data, as well as the challenge of making the massively heterogeneous yet interlinked cultural heritage content interoperable on a semantic level. In the approach described, the data is published not only for human use, but also as intelligent services for other computer systems that can then provide interfaces of their own for the linked data. As a concrete use case of using CultureSampo as a service, the BookSampo system for publishing Finnish fiction literature on the semantic web is presented.
Conference Paper
RODIN is a tool for user-defined federated search and the simultaneous exploration of the web of documents and the Semantic Web. The system combines a widget aggregation approach for general web resources with an ontology matching approach for Linked Open Data. The project is part of the E-lib.ch-project (www.e-lib.ch), the Swiss initiative for building a single-point-of-access digital library for Switzerland. Within this context, RODIN was basically designed as an innovative and alternative information portal approach for digital libraries that neither depends on indexing as do common search engines nor relies on harvesting approaches as many library information systems do.
Article
Documentary approaches: the contents come first The web is designed for public access, a model that does not fit private business, which needs to exercice control and limits over information. Nevertheless, companies can benefit from the web model, with its founding principles of universality, simplicity and technical suppport and the techologies that make this possible. The same applies to the semantic web, as our case study shows.
Europeana data model documentation
  • Valentine Charles
Charles, Valentine. 2016. "Europeana data model documentation." Europeana Professional. http://pro.europeana.eu/page/edm-documentation.
State of the LOD Cloud 2014 University of Mannheim, Data and Web Science Group
  • Max Schmachtenberg
  • Christian Bizer
  • Heiko Paulheim
Schmachtenberg, Max, Christian Bizer, and Heiko Paulheim. 2014. "State of the LOD Cloud 2014." University of Mannheim, Data and Web Science Group. August 30. http://linkeddatacatalog.dws.informatik.unimannheim.de/state/.
Linked Data World Wide Web Consortium
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René Schurte, Art and design as linked data: the LODZ project
  • Nicolas Prongué
  • Fabio Ricci
  • René Schneider
Nicolas Prongué, Fabio Ricci, René Schneider, René Schurte, Art and design as linked data: the LODZ project (Linked Open Data Zurich)
The technology In FRBR Before and After: A Look at Our Bibliographic Models Chicago: American Library Association
  • Karen Coyle
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Swissbib data goes linked Teil 2: Verlinkung Und Anreicherung Swissbib Info
  • Felix Bensmann
Bensmann, Felix. 2016. "Swissbib data goes linked Teil 2: Verlinkung Und Anreicherung." Swissbib Info. April 28. http://swissbib.blogspot. com/2016/04/swissbib-data-goes-linked-teil-2.html.
Europeana linked open data
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Europeana. 2015. "Europeana linked open data." Europeana Labs. http://labs. europeana.eu/api/linked-open-data-introduction.
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