by Alexander Polonsky

Linked Data is a quickly growing initiative for interlinking heterogeneous data and metadata in order to make it easier to access and search in a unified way. Linked Data appears to be the perfect paradigm to approach the problems faced by librarians. It addresses the issues of data interoperability, interconnecting data silos, and unified data access.

Libraries have been experimenting with Linked Data from the very start of the initiative. Below are some links that document this experience:

1. Linked Data at the Library of Congress: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/about.html
2. Linked Data at the National Library of Sweden: http://code4lib.org/files/LIBRIS_code4lib.pdf
3. Use cases compiled by the W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group: http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/UseCases

An important aspect of getting Linked Data is to use reference vocabularies, such as taxonomies, thesauri, and other related flavors. Reference vocabularies provide the magic glue that keeps the data together, by helping to: 1) standardize terminology across data sets, 2) link terms from related data sets, and 3) map query terms to the relevant terms in the Linked Data.

Get on the Linked Data wagon for a ride into the future!

Alexander Polonsky is the Director of Marketing at Mondeca. Mondeca is a new SLA member and will be exhibiting this year at the conference. Mondeca develops software for managing Linked Data and reference vocabularies.