Linked Data Implementations—Who, What and Why?

Editor's Notes

• #3: The impetus for an “International Linked Data Survey for Implementers” were discussions with OCLC Research Library Partner metadata managers who were aware of a number of linked data projects or services but felt there must be more “out there”. In consultation with a number of colleagues and after some beta testing with a group of linked data implementers with the survey instrument, we conducted an initial survey in July – August 2014. The target audience were those who had already implemented a linked data project or service, or were in the process of doing so. Questions were asked both about publishing linked data and consuming linked data. I published the results in a series of posts on our HangingTogether blog. One of the first criticisms we received were that the results did not include some leading linked data implementers such as the national libraries of France and Germany. So we repeated the survey between 1 June and 31 July 2015.
• #4: These are the number of institutions reporting one or more linked data project or service, either ones publishing linked data, consuming linked data, or both.
• #5: These are the countries represented by the 90 institutions which have implemented or are implementing at least one linked data project or service. US respondents numbered 39, or 43% of the total. Spain: 10 (11%) UK: 9 (10%) Netherlands: 6 (7%)
• #6: We were successful in our attempts to solicit responses from more national libraries in the 2015 survey.
• #7: This is how I categorized the responding institutions, but others may do it differently. National Libraries which responded (14): Biblioteca. Real Academia Nacional de Medicina, Bibliotheque nationale de France, British Library, German National Library, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Library of Congress, National Diet Library, National Library of Malaysia, National Library of Medicine, National Library of Portugal, National Library of Spain, National Library of Sweden, National Library of Wales, National Széchényi Library [Hungary] Categorized as “network” (10): ABES, BIBSYS, Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya, Digital Public Library of America, Europeana Foundation, Haute école de gestion de Genève (SwissBib), North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center, OCLC, RERO - Library Network of Western Switzerland, and The European Library. Government (7): Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID). Biblioteca della Camera dei deputati (Italy), Biblioteca Valenciana Nicolau Primitiu, Biblioteca Virtual de Derecho Aragonés, Consejería de Educación, Cultura y Deportes Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, España, Diputación de Málaga. Cultura y Deportes. Biblioteca Cánovas del Castillo, Ministry of Defense (Spain) Scholarly (based at one institution but multi-institutional on a theme/discipline) (6): Big Data Institute [Muninn Project, Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory]; Colorado State [datasets from the NSF-funded Shortgrass Steppe-Long-Term Ecological Research station in northern Colorado, for researchers in natural sciences]; Fundacción Ignacio Larramendi (Spain); Pratt Institute [Linked jazz]; University of Alberta Libraries [Canadiana, partners with Pan-Canadian Documentary Heritage Network]; University of Applied Sciences St. Poelten [encyclopedic music data for music magazines, legal information for publishers and semantic tagging/indexing for video files at community TV network.] Public library/libraries (5): Anythink Libraries, Arapahoe Library District, Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library, New York Public Library, Oslo Public Library Museum (3): British Museum, J. Paul Getty Trust, Smithsonian Other: 1 publisher (Springer) and 3 societies (American Numismatic Society, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Minnesota Historical Society)
• #8: The 71 institutions responding to the 2015 survey reported a total of 168 linked data projects/services, of which 112 were described. Two-thirds of these linked data projects/services are in production, of which 61% have been in production for more than two years. It’s almost double the number of projects/services in production for over two years reported in 2014l.
• #9: In both the 2014 and 2015 surveys, most projects/services both consume and publish linked data. Relatively few only publish linked data.
• #10: Although the number of respondents between the two surveys differ, the ranking of the reasons given for publishing linked data are the same.
• #11: Given the relatively large representation of libraries among respondents, no surprise that bibliographic and authority data are the most common types of data published, with descriptive metadata a close third. Other: 5 of the 11 “other” were about organizational data; 2 were data about people (researchers, library staff). 1 about performance works (e.g., shows).
• #12: I’ve selected a few examples from the 75 linked data projects or services described that are in production. Not so easy, as they are meant for machines to read, not a human like me. This is just a sampling.
• #13: In March 2010 the hbz, several Cologne-based libraries and the Library Centre of Rhineland-Palatinate started an open data initiative as the first German institutions to release library catalog data into the public domain. ” In November 2013 the hbz launched a linked open data API via its service lobid. This API provides access to different kinds of data: - _bibliographic data_ from the hbz union catalogue with 20 million records and 45 million holdings - _authority data_ from the German Integrated Authority File (Gemeinsame Normdatei, GND) with subject headings, persons, corporate bodies, events, places and works _address data_ on libraries and related institutions, taken from the German ISIL registry and the MARC organization codes data base.” This is one of the larger published linked data sources with 1 – 5 billion triples.
• #14: This is from North Carolina State University’s “Organization Name Linked Data”. “Where possible, Acquisitions & Discovery staff created links to descriptions of the same organization in other linked data sources, including the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF), Dbpedia,Freebase, and International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI). ”
• #15: Springer is the only publisher to respond to our survey. The description of its linked data project: "In this project we make data about scientific conferences available as Linked Open data. The availability of such a dataset will contribute to the broader goals of publishing the scholarly data as LOD: – accessible science: data about publications, authors, topics, and conferences should be easy to explore; – transparent science: the data on productivity and impact of authors, research institutions, and conferences should be open and easy to analyze.”
• #16: The British Library was one of the first to make its national bibliography available as linked open data, exposing it in bulk. It is considered successful as it has been selected for the UK National Information Infrastructure and its data model has been influential. Note that it includes links to both the ISNI and VIAF identifiers for this entity. The end of the page also shows the SPARQL query to retrieve the result that people can modify and re-run.
• #17: The National Diet Library reported on 5 different projects in the 2015 survey. One was for publishing bibliographic data as linked data, another on publishing authority data as linked data. This one is to enable comprehensive searching of sounds videos, images, web information and other resources related to the Great Kanto earthquake of 2011. Slide from Jean Godby, OCLC Research
• #18: Example from the British Museum Semantic Web Collection Online, “to join and relate to a growing body of linked data published by other organisations around the world interested in promoting accessibility and collaboration.”
• #19: “The Muninn Project is a multidisciplinary, multinational, academic research project investigating millions of records pertaining to the First World War in archives around the world. Our aim is to take archives of digitized documents, extract the written data using massive amount of computing power and turn the resulting information into structured databases. These databases will then support further research in a number of different areas.”
• #20: The Pratt Institute reported its Linked Jazz project, which applies Linked Open Data technologies to digital heritage materials and explores the implications of linked data in the user experience. It exposes relationships between musicians and enables jazz enthusiasts to make more connections. It generated new triples from the content of interview transcripts – from the data rather then converting existing metadata. Transcripts came from Rutgers Institute for Jazz Studies Archives, Smithsonian Jazz Oral Histories, the Hamilton College Jazz Archive, UCLA’s Central Avenue Sounds series, and the University of Michigan’s Nathaniel C. Standifer Video Archive of Oral History.  Slide from Jean Godby, OCLC Research
• #22: Again, the ranking of the reasons given for consuming linked data are almost the same among respondents in the 2014 and 2015 surveys.
• #23: These are the sources 12 or more of the 2015 survey respondents reported that they consumed. I’ve starred the ones which also responded to the survey. Note that “resources we convert to linked data ourselves” is one of the top linked data sources consumed. One advice from linked data implementers is to first consume the linked data you publish. As these could be considered successful publishers of linked data by the degree to which others consume the data provided, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at their profiles extracted from their respective responses.
• #25: The sources in red font are those which also responded to the survey.
• #33: I was struck by the number of respondents who said they would do nothing differently!
• #35: We plan to add the responses to the 2015 survey to the spreadsheet with the 2014 responses. You’ll be able to make your own comparisons, or focus on the institutions that most resemble yours.