Ending the Invisible Library | Linked Data

Ending the Invisible Library | Linked Data. Matt Enis. Library Journal. February 24, 2015.
The World Wide Web began as a collection of web pages that were navigated with links. Now, and going forward, the web is increasingly about data and relationships among data objects. The use of MARC is "becoming an anachronism in an increasingly networked world". The site schema.org, is a collection of structured data ­schemas that help web designers specify entities and relationships among entities, but these tools were not designed with libraries in mind. MARC lacks the ability to encode this information or make it accessible on the web. Libraries need to start formatting their data so it can be accessed from internet search tools.

The W3C Schema Bib Extend Community Group (librarians, vendors, and organizations) have been working to expand schema.org to better represent library bibliographic information for search engines. The Library of congress has been working with the BIBFRAME project; “a major focus of the project is to translate the MARC 21 format to a Linked Data model while retaining as much as possible the robust and beneficial aspects of the historical format.” This will structure library records so that search engines can “extract meaningful information" and make it available. Ultimately, LC plans for BIBFRAME to replace MARC; there is a tool to convert MARC records to BIBFRAME.

The Libhub Initiative is a proof-of-concept project to build a network of libraries using BIBFRAME standards to link data between institutions and show how this can make library resources more visible on the internet.

Digital Preservation Matters.