On the Way to Library Linked Data

For more than a decade, OCLC’s Research division has been investigating the tools, standards, workflows, and strategies for making the transition from traditional bibliographic metadata to fully linked data. In this presentation, OCLC Research Software Engineers, Jeff Mixter and Bruce Washburn, will provide a perspective on the promise and potential of library linked data that is framed by OCLC Research’s past work.

In a recently completed pilot project, OCLC partnered with five institutions that manage their digital collections with OCLC’s CONTENTdm service to investigate methods for—and the feasibility of—transforming metadata into linked data to improve the discoverability and management of digitized cultural materials and their descriptions. This pilot project, reported in “Transforming Metadata into Linked Data to Improve Digital Collection Discovery”, was designed to help the OCLC team and the pilot participants better understand the following questions:

How divergent are the descriptive data practices across the institutions using CONTENTdm, and what tools are needed to make that assessment?

Can a shared and extensible data model be developed to support the differing needs and demands for a range of material types and institution types?

What is the right mix of human attention and automation to effectively reconcile metadata headings to linked data entities?

What types of tools can help extend the description of cultural materials to subject matter experts?

After metadata from different institutions and collections is transformed, are there new discovery tools that can help researchers find new—or previously hidden—connections through a centralized discovery system?

What are the institutional and individual interests in the paradigm shift of moving to linked data?

A discussion of the findings and lessons learned from investigating these questions will be the primary focus of the presentation, and we will wrap up with a look into the near future for OCLC linked data developments.