Library Linked Data Final Report from the W3C

One of the organizations that we pay attention to at Unlimited Priorities is the MIT-Based, World Wide Web Consortium (often referred to as the W3C). This is the group that oversees standards for the Web. The W3C has several incubator groups working on new and emerging standards. Their Library Linked Data Incubator Group, which includes people from OCLC, LYRASYS, the Library of Congress, Talis and several major universities, has the mission to help increase global interoperability of library data on the Web.

This group has just published a final report in which they characterize the current state of library data management, outline the potential benefits of publishing library data as Linked Data, and formulate next-step recommendations for library standards bodies, data and systems designers, librarians, archivists, and library leaders. These recommendations are focused on helping make the information that libraries create and curate more visible and re-usable outside of their original library context on the wider Web

The group also has released two other documents. The Use Cases document includes over 60 specific use cases where linked data has been used to increase access to library data. These include projects to share and connect American Civil War data, projects to preserve digital objects for the long term, preservation of photographic collections, projects to enhance publications with original data, video, and images, projects to use crowdsourcing to enhance collections and projects to generally increase search engine access to library data.

The second document, Datasets, Value Vocabularies, and Metadata Element Sets, provides the linked data community with an overview of the viewpoint, resources, and terminology used by the library community for their data and provides a summary of Linked Data concepts for Library and Information Science professionals.