OCLC has been working a lot with linked data in recent years, and we have described some of that work at a very high level in this space before. That work continues, but now we are also adding an educational component to that work. Since we want our member libraries to be able to take advantage of all of the linked data that is becoming available—both from us and from the world at large—we want to help library software developers understand the tools and strategies for consuming linked data.
OCLC has been publishing bibliographic linked data since 2012. Since then we have published three major datasets as linked open data: WorldCat.org, WorldCat Works and OCLC Persons.
As we continue to work on creating and publishing linked data, a key goal is to demonstrate how this technology fits into library workflows and how it can add value for both librarians and users.
As part of this process, OCLC Research has used the recent work of Google Research as inspiration for the development of a Knowledge Vault pipeline. The focus of our effort is to develop a pipeline process that allows for the harvesting, extraction, normalization, scoring/weighting and synthesizing of knowledge from Authority files, bibliographic records and eventually resources from across the Web such as WikiData or user-contributed feedback.
“Linked data” is a popular topic at library conferences these days, with overflow crowds wondering what it might mean for their institutions and their personal professional development. Why? Because linked data can be easily understood by computers, resulting in opportunities for improved library workflows, enhanced user experiences, and discovery of library collections through a variety of popular sites and Web services, including Google, Wikipedia and social networks.
Before briefly explaining the nuts and bolts of linked data, it is important to point out that for most libraries and librarians the sea change from records full of text strings to fully linked data elements will largely occur under your radar.