Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:44:29AM -0400, Ed Summers wrote: OpenLibrary is already using the DublinCore vocabulary in its metadata, just like WorldCat Search API, which seems enough to me. I'm personally pretty interested to see OpenLibrary taking a more organic approach to vocabulary selection, mixing and matching vocabulary elements rather than imposing a particular metadata world-view. I'm also pleased to see OpenLibrary's approach to thinking about the resources they are publishing on the web (A URL For Every Book), and providing metadata for those resources in a way that fits in seamlessly with the web. Agreed on the mixing and matching. That's what all these wild vocabularies live for! Gabriel
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
I agree with Ed. It would be best to omit the statement about the cover image if it doesn't actually exist. Keith On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 9:39 PM, Ed Summerse...@pobox.com wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Karen Coyleli...@kcoyle.net wrote: Does it work for folks if this returns either a cover OR a blank? (1x1 jpg). It may be awkward to test first for an actual cover. Also, if it's ok to not test for a cover, does anyone have a preference over the blank or a 404 error? I think the API can do both. My personal preference would be to include the assertion about the cover image only if it's true. It might be better to say nothing than having to live with the false positives. But maybe some other people feel differently about it. //Ed
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
OK, so we'll only include cover images if we can test for them. - kc Keith Jenkins wrote: I agree with Ed. It would be best to omit the statement about the cover image if it doesn't actually exist. Keith On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 9:39 PM, Ed Summerse...@pobox.com wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Karen Coyleli...@kcoyle.net wrote: Does it work for folks if this returns either a cover OR a blank? (1x1 jpg). It may be awkward to test first for an actual cover. Also, if it's ok to not test for a cover, does anyone have a preference over the blank or a 404 error? I think the API can do both. My personal preference would be to include the assertion about the cover image only if it's true. It might be better to say nothing than having to live with the false positives. But maybe some other people feel differently about it. //Ed -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Ed Summers wrote: Also have you considered linking to the book covers in the bibliographic data view using something like foaf:depiction and/or foaf:thumbnail? For example: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M foaf:depiction http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/olid/OL6807502M-L.jpg . Does it work for folks if this returns either a cover OR a blank? (1x1 jpg). It may be awkward to test first for an actual cover. Also, if it's ok to not test for a cover, does anyone have a preference over the blank or a 404 error? I think the API can do both. BTW, basic author RDF is coded and in beta. I'll announce when it goes on the public site. kc -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Karen Coyleli...@kcoyle.net wrote: Does it work for folks if this returns either a cover OR a blank? (1x1 jpg). It may be awkward to test first for an actual cover. Also, if it's ok to not test for a cover, does anyone have a preference over the blank or a 404 error? I think the API can do both. My personal preference would be to include the assertion about the cover image only if it's true. It might be better to say nothing than having to live with the false positives. But maybe some other people feel differently about it. //Ed
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Hello Karen, Thanks so much for your detailed response. Karen Coyle wrote: The OL group has talked about linking to id.loc.gov, but in fact the project folks are mainly interested in getting away from the LCSH structuring of subjects. I admit that I find it hard to defend LCSH in the discussions about subjects and subject searching. ;-) Fundamentally, I agree about the limitations of the LCSH for human usability but linking the headings to their representations on id.loc.gov seems like a simple way to leverage data that already exists in great quantity. I think it would be unfortunate to see the LCSH ignored when they have the potential to collocate large amounts of resources on the Web thanks to the SKOS encoded version and their presence in nearly every bibliographic record. Though I appreciate the focus on the human UI, I think this addition would be extremely useful for future applications. Again, many thanks for hearing me out... Aaron
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:40 AM, Karen Coyleli...@kcoyle.net wrote: Ed, I have NO IDEA how you got to rdf/xml from the OL author link -- do tell, and I'll take a look! There is no RDF/XML export template for authors, but one could be created. The URI/URL is simply the address of the author page, and also considered the author identifier on OL. The nice thing about this linked data stuff is all you have to do is follow your nose: -- e...@rorty:~$ curl --include --header Accept: application/rdf+xml http://openlibrary.org/a/OL1518080A HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/rdf+xml; charset=utf-8 Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:01:32 GMT Server: lighttpd/1.4.19 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: Keep-Alive Age: 0 ?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8? rdf:RDF xmlns:ol='http://openlibrary.org/type/author' ol:nameLawrence Lessig/ol:name ol:personal_nameLawrence Lessig/ol:personal_name ol:key/a/OL1518080A/ol:key ol:typehttp://openlibrary.org/type/author.rdf/ol:type ol:id5209974/ol:id /rdf:RDF -- //Ed
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Hi Karen, Simply adding .rdf to the end of that link returns the RDF/XML Ed mentioned, though invalid due to the namespace issue. Additionally, it looks to me like content negotiation is functioning properly against the author URIs as well as the bibs, which is fantastic. I'd agree with Ed's postulation that you're basically already doing linked-data. The fact that the following does what I'd expect is great: curl -H Accept: application/rdf+xml http://openlibrary.org/a/OL1518080A Adding to the chorus, thanks for announcing this. -Corey Karen Coyle wrote: Ed, I have NO IDEA how you got to rdf/xml from the OL author link -- do tell, and I'll take a look! There is no RDF/XML export template for authors, but one could be created. The URI/URL is simply the address of the author page, and also considered the author identifier on OL. Thanks for the covers suggestion -- I'll see if that can be added. kc Ed Summers wrote: Thanks for announcing this exciting news Karen. Are there any plans to improve the Author data view? For example the bibliographic description you pointed us at [1] references Lawrence Lessig using: http://openlibrary.org/a/OL1518080A Which is really nice, and honestly enough to say you are doing linked-data IMHO. But when you resolve that URI you get a chunk of rdf/xml which isn't valid (no rdf namespace declared). If this could be fixed it might even nice to deliver up Authors using something like FOAF if possible. Also have you considered linking to the book covers in the bibliographic data view using something like foaf:depiction and/or foaf:thumbnail? For example: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M foaf:depiction http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/olid/OL6807502M-L.jpg . Thanks again for taking the time to announce this new support. //Ed [1] http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf -- Corey A Harper Metadata Services Librarian New York University Libraries 20 Cooper Square, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10003-7112 212.998.2479 corey.har...@nyu.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Karen, I hate to say it but as someone who is working with the WorldCat Search API at this point I sure could create code that used Open Library data faster if you used one of the same metadata formats that the WorldCat Search API uses. While the two services seem different, (I haven't really figured out how to effectively search with the Open Library API) there is a learning curve just working with different metadata formats. It would be good not to have to teach my staff about another format if I don't have to. That being said, I'd love to see MODS, that is if it is really good MODS where names are broken out into their component parts (given, family) and roles are included. Karen On 8/10/09 3:42 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote: I'd really appreciate some testing and any comments folks have. Thanks, kc Original Message Subject: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:32:25 -0700 From: Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net Reply-To: Open Library -- technical discussion ol-t...@archive.org To: Open Library -- technical discussion ol-t...@archive.org The Open Library API that returns bibliographic data in RDF/XML has been greatly modified. To make use of it, simply add '.rdf' to the end of the bibliographic identifier: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf and of course it can be used in a curl command as: curl 'http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf' The output relies heavily on DCMI Metadata Terms (dcterms) [1] for its properties, but also makes use of Bibliontology [2] and RDA Vocabulary [3] where those present a better fit. Because it is in XML, this provides what we hope will be an easy-to-use format that makes use of commonly known metadata terms. Not all data elements are included in the output, in particular there is no attempt at this point to export the tables of contents fields. That could be a future enhancement. We would appreciate any comments you have on this API, as well as suggestions and corrections. There are a number of different bibliographic formats that we could return in our APIs: MARCXML, MODS, EndNote import, ... I would be particularly interested to hear if there are particular formats that you would find immediately useful. Thanks, kc [1] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ [2] http://bibliontology.com/ [3] http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/1.html -- Karen A. Coombs Head of Libraries' Web Services University of Houston 114 University Libraries Houston, TX 77204-2000 Phone: (713) 743-3713 Fax: (713) 743-9811 Email: kacoo...@uh.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Coombs, Karen Akacoo...@central.uh.edu wrote: I hate to say it but as someone who is working with the WorldCat Search API at this point I sure could create code that used Open Library data faster if you used one of the same metadata formats that the WorldCat Search API uses. While the two services seem different, (I haven't really figured out how to effectively search with the Open Library API) there is a learning curve just working with different metadata formats. It would be good not to have to teach my staff about another format if I don't have to. That being said, I'd love to see MODS, that is if it is really good MODS where names are broken out into their component parts (given, family) and roles are included. For the sake of providing an alternate perspective, while it would be nice to see an OpenSearch description for OpenLibrary to complement the WorldCat Search API I think it would be a mistake to suggest that OpenLibrary should use SRU and/or MARCXML as an output format just to provide some commonality w/ OCLC. Perhaps there is more to Karen's suggestion though. OpenLibrary is already using the DublinCore vocabulary in its metadata, just like WorldCat Search API, which seems enough to me. I'm personally pretty interested to see OpenLibrary taking a more organic approach to vocabulary selection, mixing and matching vocabulary elements rather than imposing a particular metadata world-view. I'm also pleased to see OpenLibrary's approach to thinking about the resources they are publishing on the web (A URL For Every Book), and providing metadata for those resources in a way that fits in seamlessly with the web. //Ed
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Karen, I assume that MARCXML is one of those formats? As for MODS, that's possible although at the moment names would not be broken down. OL is working on altering its storage of names to include separate given and family portions, so that will be possible in the future. Note that an initial MARCXML implementation will not be full MARC, in the sense that the OL record doesn't store most of the MARC fixed field data. In the case where the original input record was a MARC record, more work needs to be done to combine that original record with OL enhancements and export as full MARC. kc Coombs, Karen A wrote: Karen, I hate to say it but as someone who is working with the WorldCat Search API at this point I sure could create code that used Open Library data faster if you used one of the same metadata formats that the WorldCat Search API uses. While the two services seem different, (I haven't really figured out how to effectively search with the Open Library API) there is a learning curve just working with different metadata formats. It would be good not to have to teach my staff about another format if I don't have to. That being said, I'd love to see MODS, that is if it is really good MODS where names are broken out into their component parts (given, family) and roles are included. Karen On 8/10/09 3:42 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote: I'd really appreciate some testing and any comments folks have. Thanks, kc Original Message Subject: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:32:25 -0700 From: Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net Reply-To: Open Library -- technical discussion ol-t...@archive.org To: Open Library -- technical discussion ol-t...@archive.org The Open Library API that returns bibliographic data in RDF/XML has been greatly modified. To make use of it, simply add '.rdf' to the end of the bibliographic identifier: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf and of course it can be used in a curl command as: curl 'http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf' The output relies heavily on DCMI Metadata Terms (dcterms) [1] for its properties, but also makes use of Bibliontology [2] and RDA Vocabulary [3] where those present a better fit. Because it is in XML, this provides what we hope will be an easy-to-use format that makes use of commonly known metadata terms. Not all data elements are included in the output, in particular there is no attempt at this point to export the tables of contents fields. That could be a future enhancement. We would appreciate any comments you have on this API, as well as suggestions and corrections. There are a number of different bibliographic formats that we could return in our APIs: MARCXML, MODS, EndNote import, ... I would be particularly interested to hear if there are particular formats that you would find immediately useful. Thanks, kc [1] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ [2] http://bibliontology.com/ [3] http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/1.html -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
OK! thanks. There must be some default operating there... RDF for authors is now on to do list! Here are the data elements available: name alternate names website birth date death date wikipedia link FOAF doesn't cover death dates... RDA has death dates, alternate names. Should FOAF be used where possible, adding in RDA to fill in? There are a lot of elements they have in common. kc Ed Summers wrote: On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:40 AM, Karen Coyleli...@kcoyle.net wrote: Ed, I have NO IDEA how you got to rdf/xml from the OL author link -- do tell, and I'll take a look! There is no RDF/XML export template for authors, but one could be created. The URI/URL is simply the address of the author page, and also considered the author identifier on OL. The nice thing about this linked data stuff is all you have to do is follow your nose: -- e...@rorty:~$ curl --include --header Accept: application/rdf+xml http://openlibrary.org/a/OL1518080A HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/rdf+xml; charset=utf-8 Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:01:32 GMT Server: lighttpd/1.4.19 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: Keep-Alive Age: 0 ?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8? rdf:RDF xmlns:ol='http://openlibrary.org/type/author' ol:nameLawrence Lessig/ol:name ol:personal_nameLawrence Lessig/ol:personal_name ol:key/a/OL1518080A/ol:key ol:typehttp://openlibrary.org/type/author.rdf/ol:type ol:id5209974/ol:id /rdf:RDF -- //Ed -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Karen, The Bio vocabulary might help with the birth/death dates: http://vocab.org/bio/0.1/.html And foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_isPrimaryTopicOf might be a good way to relate to the wikipedia page. I don't have any recommendation for alternate names (and would be interested in knowing of any, myself). All this isn't to discourage using the RDA vocabulary for any of this, but my concern is that its complexity, lack of documentation and kitchen sink approach will be daunting, especially for people coming from outside the library domain. I sort of look at RDA as the ontology of last resort. -Ross. On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Karen Coyleli...@kcoyle.net wrote: OK! thanks. There must be some default operating there... RDF for authors is now on to do list! Here are the data elements available: name alternate names website birth date death date wikipedia link FOAF doesn't cover death dates... RDA has death dates, alternate names. Should FOAF be used where possible, adding in RDA to fill in? There are a lot of elements they have in common. kc Ed Summers wrote: On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:40 AM, Karen Coyleli...@kcoyle.net wrote: Ed, I have NO IDEA how you got to rdf/xml from the OL author link -- do tell, and I'll take a look! There is no RDF/XML export template for authors, but one could be created. The URI/URL is simply the address of the author page, and also considered the author identifier on OL. The nice thing about this linked data stuff is all you have to do is follow your nose: -- e...@rorty:~$ curl --include --header Accept: application/rdf+xml http://openlibrary.org/a/OL1518080A HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/rdf+xml; charset=utf-8 Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:01:32 GMT Server: lighttpd/1.4.19 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: Keep-Alive Age: 0 ?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8? rdf:RDF xmlns:ol='http://openlibrary.org/type/author' ol:nameLawrence Lessig/ol:name ol:personal_nameLawrence Lessig/ol:personal_name ol:key/a/OL1518080A/ol:key ol:typehttp://openlibrary.org/type/author.rdf/ol:type ol:id5209974/ol:id /rdf:RDF -- //Ed -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Yes, the WorldCat Search API offers MARCXML. It is a bear to work with, which is why MODS seems like a slightly better route. Smarter than DC but not has beastly as MARCXML. I actually don't anything from the MARC fixed fields right now. So the fact that that information is missing isn't a problem. In terms of what Ed Summers said, I agree wholeheartedly. OpenLibrary doesn't need to match what OCLC is doing, but they should be aware of what is going on there and think about how stuff might dovetail nicely for developers. I'll also second his OpenSearch request. Love the ease of using OpenSearch. My favorite output to work with from WorldCat Search API now are the Atom/RSS outputs. These standards are so flexible (you can include other schemas in them) and well known beyond libraryland. Karen On 8/11/09 11:09 AM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote: Karen, I assume that MARCXML is one of those formats? As for MODS, that's possible although at the moment names would not be broken down. OL is working on altering its storage of names to include separate given and family portions, so that will be possible in the future. Note that an initial MARCXML implementation will not be full MARC, in the sense that the OL record doesn't store most of the MARC fixed field data. In the case where the original input record was a MARC record, more work needs to be done to combine that original record with OL enhancements and export as full MARC. kc Coombs, Karen A wrote: Karen, I hate to say it but as someone who is working with the WorldCat Search API at this point I sure could create code that used Open Library data faster if you used one of the same metadata formats that the WorldCat Search API uses. While the two services seem different, (I haven't really figured out how to effectively search with the Open Library API) there is a learning curve just working with different metadata formats. It would be good not to have to teach my staff about another format if I don't have to. That being said, I'd love to see MODS, that is if it is really good MODS where names are broken out into their component parts (given, family) and roles are included. Karen On 8/10/09 3:42 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote: I'd really appreciate some testing and any comments folks have. Thanks, kc Original Message Subject: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:32:25 -0700 From: Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net Reply-To: Open Library -- technical discussion ol-t...@archive.org To: Open Library -- technical discussion ol-t...@archive.org The Open Library API that returns bibliographic data in RDF/XML has been greatly modified. To make use of it, simply add '.rdf' to the end of the bibliographic identifier: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf and of course it can be used in a curl command as: curl 'http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf' The output relies heavily on DCMI Metadata Terms (dcterms) [1] for its properties, but also makes use of Bibliontology [2] and RDA Vocabulary [3] where those present a better fit. Because it is in XML, this provides what we hope will be an easy-to-use format that makes use of commonly known metadata terms. Not all data elements are included in the output, in particular there is no attempt at this point to export the tables of contents fields. That could be a future enhancement. We would appreciate any comments you have on this API, as well as suggestions and corrections. There are a number of different bibliographic formats that we could return in our APIs: MARCXML, MODS, EndNote import, ... I would be particularly interested to hear if there are particular formats that you would find immediately useful. Thanks, kc [1] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ [2] http://bibliontology.com/ [3] http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/1.html -- Karen A. Coombs Head of Libraries' Web Services University of Houston 114 University Libraries Houston, TX 77204-2000 Phone: (713) 743-3713 Fax: (713) 743-9811 Email: kacoo...@uh.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Thanks, Karen, this is a really exciting development. I was wondering, though, whether there is a plan to link any of the Open Library data with existing linked data sets, for example: dbpedia.org for authors/titles and id.loc.gov for subjects? I realize that exposing data in RDF and exposing linked open data do not necessarily need to be synonymous but the richness of the Open Library data set begs the question. Thanks again! Aaron -- Aaron Rubinstein Digital Project Manager W.E.B. Du Bois - Verizon Digitization Project Special Collections and University Archives University of Massachusetts, Amherst Tel: (413)545-9637 Email: arubi...@library.umass.edu Web: http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/ Quoting Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net: I'd really appreciate some testing and any comments folks have. Thanks, kc Original Message Subject:[ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:32:25 -0700 From: Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net Reply-To: Open Library -- technical discussion ol-t...@archive.org To: Open Library -- technical discussion ol-t...@archive.org The Open Library API that returns bibliographic data in RDF/XML has been greatly modified. To make use of it, simply add '.rdf' to the end of the bibliographic identifier: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf and of course it can be used in a curl command as: curl 'http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6807502M.rdf' The output relies heavily on DCMI Metadata Terms (dcterms) [1] for its properties, but also makes use of Bibliontology [2] and RDA Vocabulary [3] where those present a better fit. Because it is in XML, this provides what we hope will be an easy-to-use format that makes use of commonly known metadata terms. Not all data elements are included in the output, in particular there is no attempt at this point to export the tables of contents fields. That could be a future enhancement. We would appreciate any comments you have on this API, as well as suggestions and corrections. There are a number of different bibliographic formats that we could return in our APIs: MARCXML, MODS, EndNote import, ... I would be particularly interested to hear if there are particular formats that you would find immediately useful. Thanks, kc [1] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ [2] http://bibliontology.com/ [3] http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/1.html -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234 ___ Ol-tech mailing list ol-t...@archive.org http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: [ol-tech] Modified RDF/XML api]
Aaron, there has been talk about exposing the data in Open library as LOD, but the project is currently focused more on creating an interactive site for humans rather than a manipulable data store, although ideally those two could co-exist. Right now there is some linking to Wikipedia personal names but not to dbpedia (as far as I know, but things change quickly...) although as you know the Wikipedia link is just one short step away from dbpedia. The number of names in Wiki/db is relatively small, and the programmer working on the data manipulation, Edward Betts, has found about 80K matches. Compared to the number of names in the LC name authorities file that is really small. I would like to make the link from the names in the bib records to the LCNA records to pick up those record numbers as identifiers. No one wants to use the library form in name displays, so without those identifiers we will lose the uniqueness that name authority provides. Presumably, LCNA will eventually be online and the data could be linked, thus picking up alternative name forms. Similar experimentation is being done with place names from subject headings. The OL group has talked about linking to id.loc.gov, but in fact the project folks are mainly interested in getting away from the LCSH structuring of subjects. I admit that I find it hard to defend LCSH in the discussions about subjects and subject searching. ;-) I wish that we had better access to both LC and Dewey classifications: the class numbers, what they mean in words, and how they link to subject headings. For anyone who wants to use the OL as simply data, there is a full database dump done periodically, which you can find here: http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/jsondump I don't know much about it, but there is work being done with these dumps at http://ol.dataincubator.org/ On another note, since the whole data set is quite large, one of the current efforts is to make it possible to identify collections that could be downloaded as sets of metadata or harvested using OAI. We might be able to find better uses for those collections than for the entire db which, as is the case with most large bibliographic databases, has a fair amount of chaff for any given definition of wheat. kc Aaron Rubinstein wrote: Thanks, Karen, this is a really exciting development. I was wondering, though, whether there is a plan to link any of the Open Library data with existing linked data sets, for example: dbpedia.org for authors/titles and id.loc.gov for subjects? I realize that exposing data in RDF and exposing linked open data do not necessarily need to be synonymous but the richness of the Open Library data set begs the question. Thanks again! Aaron -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
