Linked Data

Linked Data is about communities agreeing on the meaning of their data and sharing it in a massively networked information space. This vision is taking shape in many sectors, including e-commerce, medicine, scientific research, and government services. OCLC Research is a leader in driving this transformation in the library community.

Current Work

Learn about the most recent OCLC Research developments in Linked Data below. Track the latest developments on Hanging Together: the OCLC Research blog. Even more context about OCLC's work in linked data is provided in the Overview.

Linked Data Wikibase
OCLC is partnering with over a dozen libraries on a prototype editing environment that demonstrates the value of linked data for improving descriptions of library resources. The prototype gives human editors the tools needed to create and enrich descriptions of people, organizations, creative works, and other important entities.

Linked Data prototype system diagram

2018 International Linked Data Survey for Implementers
Survey
OCLC Research conducted an "International Linked Data Survey for Implementers" in 2014 and 2015, attracting responses from a total of 90 institutions in 20 countries. The survey is being conducted again in 2018 and results are expected later in the year. Read more.

IIIF at OCLC
Presentation | 27 March 2018
By Jeff Mixter
This presentation gives an overview of OCLC’s involvement with the International Image Interoperability Format, or IIIF, a linked-data-aware standard for presentation and description of digital images.
Presented at the Visual Resources Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA.

Library Linked Data in the Cloud: OCLC’s Experiments with Next-Generation Resource Description
Monograph | April 2018
By Jean Godby, Shenghui Wang, and Jeff Mixter.
Published by Morgan and Claypool in 2015, the complete text is now available as HTML.

National Strategy for Shareable Local Name Authorities National Forum: a White Paper
White paper | March 2018
Community leaders, including Jean Godby and Janifer Gatenby, discuss ways to improve the efficiency of workflows that produce disambiguated names of people, organizations, and other important entities associated with library resources. In the process, the practice of library authority control will be modernized to focus on the management of identities instead of authorized name strings.
An outcome of the IMLS grant Shareable Local Authorities awarded to Cornell University; Chew Chiat Naun and Jason Kovari, principal investigators.

Explore More Linked Data Research