Linked Data for Libraries, Archives and Museums

Seth van Hooland is associate professor at the Information and Communication Science department of the Universite libre de Bruxelles, where he holds the chair in Digital Information. Van Hooland is also active as a consultant for clients such as the European Commission and occasionally works for leading companies in the SemanticWeb industry such as Mondeca and Poolparty. Ruben Verborgh is a PhDresearcher in semantic hypermedia at Multimedia Lab - GhentUniversity - iMinds, Belgium. As a Master in Computer Science Engineering, he closely follows and participates in the latest evolutions on the Web. He is particularly fascinated by the Semantic Web, Linked Data, Web APIs and autonomous Web agents, and has authored more than 40 papers on these topics.

"Van Hooland and Verborgh’s handbook on linked data is the first book-length treatment of the subject aimed at museum curators, librarians, archivists and people working in digital humanities. The authors’ ambition is to make linked data and the challenges associated with it more comprehensible to heritage professionals. The tone and organization of the handbook are overtly pedagogical. Its chapters are intended not only to follow a logical progression – looking in turn at modelling, cleaning, reconciling, enriching and publishing metadata, topped and tailed by an introduction and conclusion – but also to be usable individually...In summary, this handbook is a rewarding introduction to the topic of linked data and justifies its place on the professional’s bookshelf. It is probably essential reading for any archivist with, or aiming to develop, a special interest in how metadata can or should be made fit for purpose."

• Foreword - Sebastian Chan1. IntroductionMetadata at the crossroadsDefinition and scope of key conceptsPosition and originality of the handbookStructure and learning objectivesGet in touch!NoteReferences 2. ModellingIntroductionTabular dataRelational modelMeta-markup languagesLinked dataConclusionCase study: linked data at your fingertipsNotesReferences 3. CleaningIntroductionA new field of data qualityData profilingConclusionCase study: Schoenberg Database of ManuscriptsNotesBibliography 4. ReconcilingIntroductionControlled vocabulariesSemantics and machinesBringing controlled vocabularies to the webEnabling interconnectionsConclusionCase study: Powerhouse MuseumNotesReferences 5. EnrichingIntroductionThe potential of crowdsourcingEmbracing scaleGold mining for semanticsManaging ambiguous uRLsConclusionCase study: the british LibraryNotesReferences 6. PublishingIntroductionIdentifying content with URLsMarking up contentA web for humans and machinesConclusionCase study: Cooper-hewitt National Design MuseumNotesReferences 7. ConclusionsStatistics, probability and the humanitiesMarket forcesUse of URLsEngageNote References