Designing the Garden: Getting Grounded in Linked Data

Transcription

1 Designing the Garden: Getting Grounded in Linked Data #rwlod Jenn Riley Associate Dean, Digital Initiatives McGill University

2 "Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes, Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, into something rich and strange, Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell, Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell. --Shakespeare, The Tempest

3 Photo by Liam Moloney, CC BY-SA

4 1. It s not our data and their data it s one big graph.

5 It s about the connections

6 Graph-based world views

7 Connecting things together viaf: # William Shakespeare fast: # Political Refugees dbpedia-owl: birthdate dbpedia:willia m_shakespeare worldcatwork: schema: genre Tragicomedy rdf: type rdf: type dbpedia:str atfordupon-avon foaf:person schema: CreativeWork Shakespeare s Comedy of the Tempest

8 This means we can stop worrying about Creating so much data! Where the scope of library data ends What it is and isn t our job to do Making complete descriptions ourselves Mapping data from other vocabularies into library vocabularies

9 And start worrying about Learning other metadata cultures Being Linked Data ecosystem good citizens How the technology and the data can most effectively work together Making connections between things Understanding other vocabularies and communities

10 2. We can expect more intelligence in the system.

11 September 2014

12 Guido Reni ( ) Hercules Killing the Hydra of Lerna c oil on canvas commissioned along with other scenes from the mythology of Hercules in 1617 by Ferdinando Gonzaga, for a room in the Villa Favorita in Mantua, Italy inv. 535 Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

13 What systems must do for users Mine usage data to enhance relevance and utility in discovery Start from the most relevant information and provide easy means for quick expansion on demand Coherently display conflicting information Give indications of provenance of information

14 If we re serious about information literacy, we have to give our users tools and then trust them.

15 What systems must do for metadata maintainers Flag dead ends for review and action Normalize most string-based data Highlight potentially conflicting information Hide complexity (URIs, etc) Mine and show candidate connections for review

16 This means we can stop worrying about Choosing one authoritative correct assertion in the face of conflicting data Whether or not a given source meets a certain standard for authority Authorized headings, access points And textual justifications for them A large proportion of the data cleanup tasks we used to do For example, the formatting of strings But we can expect a new set of these to emerge!

17 And start worrying about How to enhance system algorithms How users best interact with complicated information Methods for automated metadata creation and cleanup Getting large amounts of new data into the system

18 3. The information age has provided a new definition of authority.

19 Let s take a good, hard look at our authoritative data Current narrative: Libraries create good metadata! Because we re trained to do so We re consistent and follow rules That s what makes good data Other people create bad data Because it s not consistent Using a well build record structure is a key part of good metadata But We don t read the books we catalogue We don t typically have expertise in the subjects of the works we describe Sometimes we don t even read or speak the language those works use Our perspective is pretty different from our users Number of things to describe is quickly expanding and our budgets are shrinking

20 Wait, it s not about consistency and rules? Remember, we re looking at more intelligent systems in the LD world That can deal with inconsistency, masking it or cleaning it up The LD graph allows us to not worry about metadata structures So consistency and rules are no longer the primary drivers of good metadata Which means we can turn large swaths of the creation of metadata over to domain experts

21 h.org/search/commonwealth:5h7 3q9544

22 If we re serious about good metadata, we need to start from expert information.

23 We need this guy

24 And we need these folks too! Photo by veggiesosage, CC-BY-NC-ND

25 Really, it s going to be OK

26 The Linked Data community cares about provenance

27 This means we can stop worrying about Deep research on materials for which there s already a knowledgeable community Descriptions being complete Making sure everything is right

28 And start worrying about Mining the data that s already out there Promoting voices of those who engage with content How usable systems can be built to generate Linked Data from activities real people already partake in Seeding basic information for the rare and unique materials we hold that have never been released Connecting data from communities operating in different languages

29 4. Our job is to tend the garden.

30 Metadata is an ecosystem Photo by Temari 09, CC-BY-NC

31 The garden needs tending Photo by Center for International Forestry Research,

32 A new model making connections

33 This means we can stop worrying about Original cataloguing and copy cataloguing Getting data into our systems Doing all the work that needs to be done the first time we think about a specific item

34 And start worrying about Understanding the Linked Data environment Locating large and useful datasets Understanding vocabularies developed elsewhere Finding good people that can analyze relationships and make new connections

35 So how will Linked Data systems work? The data and systems are all in the cloud Library-based discovery less important but likely still around for a while Several ways systems can navigate the graph Crawling Dereferencing Query federation (See

36 Reality check This is all the way it should work It s going to be a while before we get there Big effort needed to start connecting up these data sets Data sets and tools will get better as we start using the data in this way and demand more The library community can help to shape this evolution, but only if we fully understand and engage with the assumptions and mechanisms in play in the Linked Data community

37 A sea-change? Most definitely. This will be hard. But that won t stop us. We need to redefine our baseline. We need to rethink what new models mean for us. And, most importantly, we need to put the right people in positions to work through these issues and get the details settled. We got this.

38 Thank These presentation slides: