Presentation given at the 'Making the Most of Metadata' BL Labs event at the British Library, London in February 2014. Provides an update on the BNB LOD service.
2. www.bl.uk 2
BL Metadata Provision
• The BL Act records our role as “ a
national centre for reference, study and
bibliographical and other information
services”
• Metadata Services:
• Originally offered priced services for
national & international libraries
• Evolved through many changes in format &
delivery technologies
• Offered free services from 2010 as part of
the BL’s new open metadata strategy
3. www.bl.uk 3
BL Open Metadata Strategy
Aims:
• Enable innovation - without unnecessary barriers
• Break from library - formats & use cross domain
standards
• Obtain attribution - while offering permissive
licensing
Offerings for:
• Libraries - MARC21/Z39.50
• Researchers - RDF/XML & .CSV
• Linked data developers - RDF Triples/SPARQL
4. www.bl.uk 4
BL Open Metadata
• Over 1040 organisations in 98
countries now use BL Open Data
services
• Collaborated with Microsoft
Research, W3C, UK Government, &
developers on technical, standards & license
challenges
• Linked Open BNB
• Cabinet Office best practice exemplar
• Selected for inclusion in UK National
Information Infrastructure (NII)
• Open Data Institute certification
• 2 million transactions monthly
6. www.bl.uk 6
Why Create the Open BNB?
A reusable dataset of published items
& not an institutional catalogue
Permissive License – can offer as
CC0
Includes information on:
People
Places
Dates
Subjects
Consistent format & structure
Reflects over 60 years of
contemporary UK interests
7. www.bl.uk 7
Linking
To give BNB data broader
context we linked to:
• General resources:
• GeoNames
• Lexvo
• RDF Book
Mashup
• Library resources:
• LCSH
• VIAF
• Dewey.info
8. www.bl.uk 8
RDF Vocabularies
Bibliographic Resource
• Dublin Core
• Bibliographic Ontology
• ISBD
• British Library Terms
Event
• Event Ontology
• British Library Terms
Place
• WGS84 Geo Positioning
Person/Organization
• FOAF: Friend of a Friend
• Bio: a Vocabulary for
Biographical Information
• Org: an Organisation
Ontology
• RDA
Concept
• SKOS
• British Library Terms