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Libraries and Linked DataQuotes
RDAQuotes
Libraries have a very long history in trying to systematize and catalog the world's knowledge. However, they also have a deeply engrained model of how it is supposed to be done, by a few heavyweight and fairly centralized organizations. How this world view can the changed or adapt to the more decentralized and heterogeneous world view of the Semantic Web and Linked Data is a question the library community has debated since it became clear that libraries are not the only large-scale organizing systems for knowledge and documents anymore.
Libraries and Linked DataQuotes
Libraries and Linked DataQuotes [2]
RDAQuotes [2]
Libraries and Linked DataQuotes E. Wilde: Semantic Web and Linked Data for Libraries
One can easily imagine libraries working with their vendors to collaboratively develop a large shared knowledgebase that could act as a librarylinking hub. The linking hub would expose a network of tightly linked information from publishers, aggregators, book and journal vendors, subject authorities, name authorities, and other libraries.
In a case study of the socio-technological impacts of implementing semantic technologies, it was concluded that the major stresses of implementation would rest with the strategic and operational levels of the organization rather than the technological.
Librarians have traditionally preferred to stick to models and resources over which they have complete control, rather than publicaly editable, user-centred tools.
The most important question for the library world in examining semantic web technologies is whether librarians can successfully transform their expertise in working with metadata into expertise in working with ontologies or models of knowledge.
Libraries and Linked DataQuotes E. Wilde: Semantic Web and Linked Data for Libraries
Librarians have been using controlled vocabulary as a corner stone of their services, and [ … ] web'ifying locally maintained controlled vocabulary is a natural fit for the profession.
One of the library buzz phrases of recent years has beenevidence-based decision-making, the idea that business decisions should be based at least in part on quantitative data about resource use and demand.
Related to privacy is trust. Ross Singer asserts that,the largest hurdle to library adoption of Linked Data, though, may not be educational or technological [but instead] may be an issue of trust(Singer 2009 [http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november10/byrne/11byrne.html#17], 121).
True integrated systems could replace our current mishmash of proxy servers, resolvers, search applications, Integrated Library Systems (ILSs), Electronic Resource Management Systems (ERMSs), and data crosswalks, while reducing the overhead of local records maintenance and vastly increasing the amount and quality of information that libraries have at their disposal.
RDAQuotes
Libraries and Linked DataQuotes [2]
RDAQuotes [2]
RDAQuotes E. Wilde: Semantic Web and Linked Data for Libraries
The struggle to accommodate technological change with data created using the old rules is clearly not optimal, and hinders the ability of libraries to create innovative services
Users spend less time with bibliographic description and more time browsing through full texts; less time searching and more time interacting in social environments that lead them to information. It seems obvious that libraries are at a tipping point where changes in practice are essential to meet these challenges.
A complex metadata surrogate describing resources in detail is unneeded when the actual item can be viewed within a few seconds and with little effort on the part of the user.
In the digital world, identity is rarely expressed in a textual way, but instead standard linking technologies with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) are preferred.
Different, often simpler or less-structured approaches to cataloging that rely on more sophisticated use of computer mediation could provide the level of user service to which the card catalog aspired.
Since the development of the first OPACs, libraries have been trying to move forward while dragging behind them the ball of a century of legacy data and the chain of an antiquated view of the bibliographic universe. The defense of this legacy universe has all of the elements of a religious argument rather than a systematic analysis of the actual requirements for a 21st century library.
Sandler, and others looking at the future of library collections, see the focus on the published products of scholarship, where libraries have traditionally put most of their effort, making way for a new focus on primary collections of research materials. These collections, often unique and organized with emphases on geographic relevance, programmatic needs, and faculty interests and strengths, are not the product of the scholarly enterprise, but instead the precursor.
RDAQuotes E. Wilde: Semantic Web and Linked Data for Libraries
Determine a clear and explicit scope for RDA in terms of whom it will serve, what resources it will address, and what types of metadata it will produce. Based on this, provide a better assessment of the existing Principles and Objectives, editing them as necessary to achieve the stated scope; establish priorities among competing principles and objectives.[20 [http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january07/coyle/01coyle.html#20]]
If libraries are to avoid further marginalization, they need to make a fundamental change in their approach to user services.
At first seen as amateurish, the Internet gained in bona fides to the point that today some disciplines give preference to online publication, taking advantage of increased speed of delivery to an audience and broader geographical coverage. The library catalog and its conventions, valued by libraries as both an inventory of regularly published items and as the sharing mechanism for catalog entries, does not have a means to respond to this new, more chaotic information environment.
Sandler, and others looking at the future of library collections, see the focus on the published products of scholarship, where libraries have traditionally put most of their effort, making way for a new focus on primary collections of research materials. These collections, often unique and organized with emphases on geographic relevance, programmatic needs, and faculty interests and strengths, are not the product of the scholarly enterprise, but instead the precursor.
It does not seem to matter to most users that libraries currently are the only conduits for a wealth of published literature that is not available for open access on the public Internet.