Long papers, slides and videos of the conference

Plenary session 1 moderated by Gildas Illien (BnF)
They made it happen... Library linked data success stories

Linking Libraries in The European Library and Europeana by Valentine Charles and Antoine Isaac (Europeana Foundation), Nuno Freire (The European Library)

The European Library and Europeana have both an extensive experience in aggregating metadata for bibliographical records or digital resources from the cultural heritage institutions of Europe. For both of them meeting the challenges offered by multilingual and heterogeneous data is an ongoing effort. The growth of the Semantic Web and the more generalised publication of knowledge organization systems as Linked Open Data offer the possibility to make these services truly multilingual.
This paper shows how The European Library and Europeana exploit the semantic relations and translations offered by knowledge organisations systems in order to solve the problem of data integration at a European scale. It also demonstrates the potential of Linked Open Vocabularies for enabling multilingual search and retrieval services.

23 min

We grew up together: data.bnf.fr from the BnF and Logilab perspectives by Agnès Simon and Sébastien Peyrard (BnF), Vincent Michel and Adrien Di Mascio (Logilab)

Three years after the launching of the Linked Open Data site data.bnf.fr, we can report on the experience of the project, from the cross perspective of a public institution, the National library of France (BnF) and a company, Logilab. Starting like a small innovative project, with few data and a small team, data.bnf.fr is now becoming up-running service, integrating progressively all the resources of the BnF catalogues and broadly consulted.
This paper shares what made data.bnf.fr a success story: librarians and IT services from the BnF and Logilab programmers working together according to the agile software development; using the free software CubicWeb based on a relational database; relying on the long term cataloguing and diffusion policy of the library.
Yet we are now tackling technical, organizational and stategic issues concerning scalability, dependencies, stability, but also knowledge transfer to new comers on the project. We are now considering the project in a long term perspective, integrating it to the BnF routines and issues, but also keeping on innovating.

28 min

Web NDL Authorities: Authority Data of the National Diet Library, Japan, as Linked Data by Tadahiko Oshiba and Kazuo Takehana (National Diet Library)

In January 2012, the National Diet Library, Japan, (NDL) launched Web NDL Authorities, a system capable of providing NDL authority data as Linked Data. The NDL had published in book form its subject headings list since 1964 and its author name authority since 1979. It also began providing the latter in a MARC format beginning in 1997. Web NDLSH, a Web version of the National Diet Library Subject Headings (NDLSH) in the context of the Semantic Web, was first published in 2010. After this, the NDL expanded Web NDLSH to provide both name authority data and subject authority data as Linked Data, and this new system is known as Web NDL Authorities. Web NDL Authorities has been exchanging links with the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) since start of the NDL's participation in the VIAF in October 2012.
After providing a brief history of the NDL's authority data, this paper summarizes the why and how of providing NDL's authority data as Linked Data via Web NDL Authorities. This paper also describes links from Web NDL Authorities to other authority data such as the VIAF and the LCSH. This service can be accessed at http://id.ndl.go.jp/auth/ndla.

15 min

Plenary session 1 Q&A

15 min

Plenary session 2 moderated by Emmanuelle Bermès (BnF)
Perspectives for developing linked libraries and related applications

An unbroken chain: approaches to implementing Linked Open Data in libraries; comparing local, open source, collaborative and commercial systems by Lukas Koster (Library of the University of Amsterdam) and Rurik Greenal (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

This paper compares methods for libraries to interact with the Web of Data by assessing the benefits and risks associated with local development, free-and-open-source software, collaborative and commercial solutions. Through a number of case studies, we provide insight into how each approach can be implemented and the extent to which these approaches can be reconciled.

34 min

Methodological Proposals for Designing Federative Platforms in Cultural Linked Open Data: the example of MoDRef by Antoine Courtin (Labex "Past in the present") and Jean-Luc Minel (University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)

As part of the on-going Labex project "Past in the present", our proposal aims at highlighting the organizational issues of Linked Data projects that have to deal with pluri-institutional contexts, among which libraries. First, we will discuss what is at stake. Second, we will present a methodology based on the building of several diagrams which highlight technical, conceptual, and organizational obstacles. We will also address the issues of designing and producing an information system intended to ensure the transmission of scientific skills, the exploitation of major vocabularies, associated to specific vocabularies, by foreign institutions and the harmonizing or building of bridges between heterogeneous descriptions.

Internal and external interoperability of books metadata using work concept and semantic web technologies by Pierre Boudigues, Joëlle Aernoudt and Stéphane Bizeul (Electre), Gautier Poupeau (Antidot)

Metadata is a key feature of book distribution workflows in general, and e-books in particular. Traditional players in the book industry have to take into account the production workflows, quality and scope of their metadata, in order to be able to keep a leading role in the digitization process. The example of Electre's data warehouse using Semantic Web technologies shows the downfalls of current practice in the book industry in France and demonstrates the gap that has to be bridged in order to successfully combine and use the data at a global level.

20 min

Plenary session 2 Q&A

13 min

Plenary session 3 moderated by Lars Svenson (DNB)
Creating, maintaining and using vocabularies for library linked data

Making MODS to Linked Open Data: A Collaborative Effort for Developing MODS/RDF by Ray Denenberg, and Rebecca Guenther (Library of Congress), Myung-Ja Han (University of Illinois), Jeff Mixter (OCLC), Amy L. Nurnberger, Melanie Wacker, and Kathryn Pope (Columbia University), Brian Luna Lucero (Center for Digital Research and Scholarship)

The Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) RDF Group was formed in late 2013 as virtual working group to test and develop a MODS/RDF ontology that will allow MODS users to convert their MODS/XML metadata to RDF. The Group also hopes to publish a transformation tool, XSLT, as an end product. Since its first meeting in January 2014, the Group has created an openly viewable GitHub page (https://github.com/blunalucero/MODS-RDF) and members work together to solve the common issues in creating new, as well as using already established, Linked Data semantics that best work for the MODS data model and the information that library catalog records describe.

15 min

Making library Linked Data using the Europeana Data Model by Marko Knepper (University Library Frankfurt am Main) and Valentine Charles (Europeana Foundation)

Europeana provides a common access point to digital cultural heritage objects across different cultural domains among which the libraries. The recent development of the Europeana Data Model (EDM) provide new ways for libraries to experiment with Linked Data. Indeed the model is designed as a framework reusing various well-known standards developed in the Semantic Web Community, such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), the OAI Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE), and Dublin Core namespaces. It provides new opportunities for libraries to provide rich and interlinked metadata to the Europeana aggregation.
However to be able to provide data to Europeana, libraries need to create mappings from the library standard to EDM. This step involves decisions based on domain-specific requirements and on the possibilities offered by EDM. The cross-domain nature of EDM limiting in some cases the completeness of the mappings, extension of the model have been proposed to accommodate the library needs.
The "Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana" project (DM2E) has created an extension of EDM to optimize the mappings of library-data for manuscripts. This extension is in the form of subclasses and subproperties that further specialize EDM concepts and properties. It includes spatial creation and publishing information, specific contributor and publication type properties and more.
Furthermore the granularity of the mapping has been extended to allow references and annotations on page level as required for scholarly work. As part of this project the metadata of the Hebrew Manuscripts as well as of the Medieval Manuscripts presented in the Digital Collections of the Frankfurt University Library4 have been mapped to this extension. This includes links to the Integrated Authority File (GND) of the German National Library with further links to the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).
Based on this development a new comprehensive mapping from the digitalization metadata format METS/MODS to EDM has been established for all materials of the Frankfurt Judaica in "Judaica Europeana". It demonstrates today's capabilities of the creation of linked Data structures in Europeana based on library catalogue data and structural data from the digitalization process.

15 min

Versioning Vocabularies in a Linked Data World by Diane Hillmann and Jon Phipps (Metadata Management Associates LLC), Gordon Dunsire (Indenpendent consultant)

Policies regarding change management in open or public vocabularies used in the context of Linked Open Data have lagged behind those driving other web-based communities of practice. A fresh emphasis on vocabulary management and maintenance has begun to emerge, as the reliance on potentially volatile vocabularies, and the implications of their ongoing growth and change, has begun to permeate the conversation.
Particularly in libraries, where management of commonly used vocabularies has long been a community wide activity, management of vocabularies has been seen as the realm of larger institutions and organizations. This centralized control has been workable (if slow to evolve to incorporate new needs) so long as data distribution has also been centralized, but this pattern of distribution has become more questionable as a transition to the more open world of Linked Data begins to demonstrate the inflexibility of traditional practices. As more attention shifts to new vocabulary standards and usages outside libraries, researchers and innovative organizations have sought to take advantage of this boom in interest, but unlike librarians, they have little experience in implementation over time.
Merging the technology of the Semantic Web with the information management experience of libraries seems a reasonable strategy, but better understanding by all of where practices must change is critical.

28 min

From UNIMARC bibliographic and authority record to Linked Open Data by Mirna Willer (University of Zadar) and Leonardo Jelenković (UNIBIS)

The paper describes results of the research project aimed at publishing bibliographic and authority data of the Croatian Union Catalogue CROLIST, and potentially other catalogues that implement IFLA UNIMARC formats as Linked Open Data (LOD). Problems of mapping UNIMARC records in RDF using available ontological vocabularies are being described. Namely, the choice should have be made regarding the methodology used: whether to map UNIMARC records to a set of published vocabularies such as Dublin Core, ISBD, Bibo, Foaf, etc. – following the mix&match method applied by some of the national libraries (BL, BnF), or to map the data in parallel to all those vocabularies, which published namespaces that are relevant to bibliographic and authority data. In the latter case, the UNIMARC record data would be published by using UNIMARC, ISBD, DC, Bibo, MADS, RDA, EDM, DNB gnd, etc. namespaces allowing the services that "talk" a particular language to reuse the published data conforming to their needs. Additionally, such an approach would, on the one hand, retain the context of the data and the informational value of the UNIMARC vocabularies – rich and lonely, and on the other, enable the reuse of "dumbed-down" data in simpler vocabularies such as DC and Bibo by library and non-library communities and users – poor and popular. Still, the third approach would be to expose one's data in one vocabulary only, whether a locally or internationally published vocabulary, and let other services exploit it by taking advantage of the maps that use the sub-property ladder method, (from a fine granularity element to a coarse granularity element) which is being developed by some of the international standards like ISBD.

The choice made for the CROLIST data was the second approach, that is, to publish LOD in parallel available vocabularies, as mappings to other vocabularies would be internally controlled in order to manage and ensure the rendering of their contextual informational value.
Another issue that was dealt with was automatic linking to internal and external LOD sources, such as a local (CROLIST) linked name authority file and external ones such as VIAF, DBpedia, etc. It has been proven that the system's infrastructure will have to be redesigned to provide a linking process that entails reliability and quality control as part of the control of the professional.
A series of other questions were recognised that would require further research and deliberation. Some of these are: Do we know who the users of our LOD are? Can we envisage the usage our LOD will be put into, and should or need we care? Should or need everything be linked OPEN data? How to ensure the sustainability of our standards, or others' standards used in publishing our LOD? How to maintain the Universal Bibliographic Control, that is, how to become the target LOD source for other libraries, and, by extension, non-library services? Will libraries compete or will they produce information pollution if they all expose their linked open data to the Web of data?

17 min

Plenary session 3 Q&A

8 min

Plenary session 4 moderated by Emmanuelle Bermès (BnF)
Designing Linked Data software and services for libraries
Panel with Schlomo Sanders (Ex Libris), Richard Wallis (OCLC) and Nicolas Chauvat (Logilab)

This session took the form of a panel where vendors and software developers discussed their interest in implementing Linked Data technologies in libraries and other cultural organizations, provided feedback on their experience and showed available tools.

58 min