New eBook in Antpac

“Library Linked Data in the Cloud: OCLC’s Experiments with New Models of Resource Description“

Written by OCLC Research staff members Carol Jean Godby, Shenghui Wang and Jeffrey K. Mixter, the book focuses on the conceptual and technical challenges involved in publishing linked data derived from traditional library metadata. This transformation is urgent, the book maintains, because it is common knowledge that most searches for information start not in a library, or even in a Web-accessible library catalog, but elsewhere on the Internet. Modeling data in a form that the broader Web understands may help keep libraries relevant in the network environment.

In the book, the authors explain how the new Web is a growing “cloud” of interconnected resources that identify the people, places, things and concepts that people want to know about when they approach the Internet with an information need. They also explain why linked data is an appropriate architecture for the description of library resources.

“This work represents significant contributions OCLC is making with library linked data,” said Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Vice President, Research and Chief Strategist. “Our researchers are participating in the development of Web standards for machine-understandable data, contributing to the debate on how the key values of librarianship are represented in linked data techniques, and publishing some of the most widely used linked data enabled authoritative hubs in the library community.”

“Linked data has achieved a critical mass in the library community coincident with its growing importance in the wider Web. The evolutionary path from traditional library metadata standards toward a global web of linked library resources is becoming clear,” said Carol Jean Godby, OCLC Senior Research Scientist and lead author of the book. “Our goal with this book is to explain how this new architecture promises to simplify and promote the quest for knowledge.”