This page has not been updated since 2012, so the information it contains may be out of date.

Linked Open Data (LOD), that may be considered as part of the Open Data Movement (which aims at making data freely available to everyone) and could be described as a “recommended best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF” (source), has recently gained prominence in many (Digital) Libraries and Archives events and related discussions.

The recent Tech Trifecta series of conferences' (that took place at Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library, home of VuFind) presentations and discussions, namely at VuFind Summit 2012, were a major example that LOD is currently a hot issue and gathers the interest of many institutions. This section presents some selected LOD resources (information, presentations, etc.). Please feel free to add or correct the entries as needed.

Linked Open Data: The Essentials - Semantic Web Company (PDF);

LinkingOpenData - W3C SWEO (Semantic Web Education and Outreach) Community Project;

Linked Data - Connect Distributed Data across the Web [archived];

LODLAM - Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives & Museums;

Europeana Linked Open Data (LOD) | promotional video;

Linked Open Data publication guide (PDF), “report on how to select appropriate encoding strategies for producing Linked Open Data (LOD) enabled bibliographical data” (LODE-BD Recommendations 2.0).

Bibliographic Framework Initiative Approach for MARC Data as Linked Data, Sally H. McCallum, Library of Congress;

Forging links while breaking shackles: Open & Linked Data and the British Library, Brenda Young, British Library.

A pragmatic usage of LOD within VuFind would be using it as a feasible, light weight alternative to have a shared/common index of open content (mentioned above / please refer to VUFIND-570 JIRA ticket).

By implementing mechanisms for exposing and harvesting social metadata, VuFind installations would be able not only to share their own UGC (User Generated Content / social metadata) but also to collect social metadata from specific VuFind installations. Please refer to 2012-11-13 developers call’ minutes for some initial thoughts about this approach.

Related information / projects:

• OCLC Research: Sharing and Aggregating Social Metadata (web page), by the Social Metadata Working Group;

• Open Annotation Collaboration;

• International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies.