There are deeper issues at work here than just the kind of obvious surface issues.
One of the reason Europe embraced rdf triples and linked data was timing. The EU was forming its centralized information institutions the same time the idea of linked data to solve certain problem came about. So they took it and ran with it. In the US we have been primarily driven by the big data movement that gained steam shortly after. And as has already been pointed out, no one has really show an impressive end user use for linked data, which American decision making tends to be more driven by. Europeans can think about data and databases differently than we can here in the US. In Europe a database is intellectual property, in the US only parts of the database that fall under copyright law are intellectual property, which for most databases isn't much. You can’t copyright a fact. So in the US once you release the data into the wild its usually public domain. As for government data, the Federal and most state governments are in need of an overhaul that would make it possible. If you don’t have the systems or people in place who can make it happen it won’t happen. Heck the federal government can’t even get a single set of accounting software and what not. So it isn’t just a lack of leadership or will, there are other things at work as well. Brent Sent from Windows Mail From: Karen Coyle Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 10:32 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Yep, yep, and yep. Plus I'd add that the lack of centralization of library direction (read: states) is also a hindrance here. Having national leadership would be great. Being smaller also wouldn't hurt. kc On 12/19/14 6:48 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: > I don’t know about y’all, but it seems to me that things like linked data and > open access are larger trends in Europe than here in the United States. Is > there are larger commitment to sharing in Europe when compared to the United > States? If so, is this a factor based on the nonexistence of a national > library in the United States? Is this your perception too? —Eric Morgan -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net m: +1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600
