Presented at the workshop of the "Reading Experience Database" (RED) project - London - 25/02/2011. Discussion on how linked data can benefit research in humanities, using RED and data.open.ac.uk as early examples.

1. Exposing Humanities Data for Reuse and Linking RED, linked data and the semantic web Mathieu d’Aquin Knowledge Media Institute, the Open University LUCERO project, http://data.open.ac.uk

2. Motivation… From my rather ignorant perspective, humanities research = collecting data and using it for research and teaching RED is obviously a perfect example of this Challenges: How do we expose this data in such way that it makes all the potential uses of it feasible How do we expose this data so that it can connect to other collections, open information resources, etc. How do we benefit from other information resources to enrich this data, derive new research questions, connect it to aspects not originally thought about…

3. Linked Data (tada!!) As set of principles and technologies for a Web of Data Putting the “raw” data online in a standard representation (RDF) Make the data Web addressable (URIs) Link with to other Data

4. Linked Data

5. Linked Data at the OU? RAE DBPedia Data from Research Outputs OpenLearn Content ORO Archive of Course Material Library’s Catalogue Of Digital Content geonames data.gov.uk A/V Material Podcasts iTunesU BBC DBLP

6. data.open.ac.uk

8. Example Application

9. Linked data… and humanities Still early stage, but Can there be a Web of Data for humanities? What are the implications? How can be we benefit? Is this going to happen naturally, or should we make a particular effort RED: an early example exploring the potential of linked data for humanities research

10. Event Location locatedIn subClassOf subClassOf Experience City Country date: Date readerInvolved originCountry textInvolved occupation givesBackgroundTo Person religion gender creator/editor LinkedEvent Ontology Document CITO Citation Ontology Dublin Core title: String description: String published: Date providesExcerptFor FOAF DBPedia

14. Conclusion The benefits of exposing your research data as linked data is undeniable: allow for reuse and linking! Still, requires efforts The potential of linking to other data is very promising Connect things that don’t need to aggregated any more. They are in the same data space: the Web… With which come all the issues around provenance, quality, trust, etc. This represents a serious conceptual shift in the way we manage and use academic/research/educational data