What is the semantic web and what does it hold for the book industry? Graham Bell, Chief Data Architect at EDItEUR (http://www.editeur.org/), will give us a tour of the semantic web and show us the way linked data has begun to be used by libraries and the other potential it holds for the book industry.

1. Linked data
the semantic web
and what it all means
for publishers
Graham Bell
EDItEUR
7th March 2013

2. About me
• 20 years experience at the point where
publishing and technology meet
• formerly senior manager in IT department
for HarperCollins UK
• led development of bibliographic, editorial and
digital asset management systems –involved in
e-book, e-audio, print-on-demand and online
projects
• joined EDItEUR in mid-2010 as Chief Data
Architect, primarily responsible for
EDItEUR’s standards development work

3. About EDItEUR
• not-for-profit membership organisation
• develops, supports and promotes metadata
and identification standards for the book,
e-book and serials supply chains
• acknowledged centre of expertise on
standards and metadata for the industry
• based in London, but a global membership
of publishers, distributors, wholesalers,
subscription agents, retailers, libraries,
system vendors, rights organizations and
trade associations

4. About EDItEUR
• also provides management services to
International ISBN, ISTC, ISNI Agencies
• EDItEUR has three full-time staff, two FTE
project staff, plus consultants from both the
book and serials sectors
• we also work closely with other standards
organisations, to ensure our standards meet
the needs of their stakeholders too
• member participation is vital to ensure that
standards keep pace with evolving business
requirements

5. “An item of metadata
is a relationship
that someone claims to exist
between two entities.”
indecs, 2000
http://www.doi.org/factsheets/indecs_factsheet.html

6. Title: The fire engine that
disappeared
Title: The man on the
Author: Maj Sjöwall
balcony
Title: Roseanna ISBN: 978-0-00-783533-1
Author: Maj Sjöwall
Author: Maj Sjöwall
Pub date: 07-08-2007
ISBN: 978-0-00-724293-1
ISBN: 978-0-00-723283-3
Pub date: 15-01-2007
Pub date: 07-08-2006

7. Contributor
SequenceNumber1/SequenceNumber
ContributorRoleA01/ContributorRole
NameIdentifier
NameIDType16/NameIDType
IDValue0000000121479135/IDValue
/NameIdentifier
PersonNameMaj Sjöwall/PersonName
/Contributor

8. Contributor
SequenceNumber1/SequenceNumber
ContributorRoleA01/ContributorRole
NameIdentifier
NameIDType16/NameIDType
IDValue0000000121479135/IDValue
/NameIdentifier
PersonNameMaj Sjöwall/PersonName
/Contributor
http://isni.org/search

9. 0..n
Contributor Name
SequenceNumber NameType
ContributorRole NamesBeforeKey
BiographicalNote PrefixToKey
KeyNames
SuffixToKey
0..n NamesAfterKey
Name Identifier
NameIDType
IDTypeName
IDValue

10. predicate
subject object

11. 0000000121479135
ID type 16
from List 44
contributor
role A01 name type 01
from List 17 from List 18
book Sjöwall, Maj
predicate
subject object

12. Linked data
• expresses metadata as a collection of triples
• uses URIs to represent relations and entities
• prefers persistent HTTP URIs so they can be
‘looked up’ to get further details
• the data can be ‘self-describing’
• is intended to be flexible and extensible,
because it’s ‘schemaless’
• isn’t new
• is not intended for human consumption

13. Linked data
• expresses metadata as a collection of triples
• uses URIs to represent relations and entities
••prefers persistent HTTP URIs–so they can be
Uniform Resource Identifier two types…
• Uniform Resource Name
‘looked up’ to get further details
• the urn:isbn:9780001234567
• data can be ‘self-describing’
• is intended Resource Locator extensible,
• Uniform to be flexible and
because it’s ‘schemaless’
• http://dx.doi.org/10.978.000/1234567
• isn’t new
• is not intended for human consumption

14. isbn:9780007232833 0000000121479135
ID type 16
ID type 15 from List 44
from List 5
contributor
role A01 name type 01
from List 17 from List 18
book Sjöwall, Maj

15. http://
http://ns.editeur.org/
harpercollins.co.uk/ genid:A96
onix/codelists/17#A01
360366
http://ns.editeur.org/
genid:A96 0000000121479135
onix/codelist/44#16
http://ns.editeur.org/
genid:A96 Sjöwall, Maj
onix/codelists/18#01
http://
http://ns.editeur.org/ urn:isbn:
harpercollins.co.uk/
onix/codelists/5#15 9780007232833
360366

16. isbn:9780007232833 0000000121479135
ID type 16
ID type 15 from List 44
from List 5
contributor
role A01
from List 17
book Sjöwall, Maj
http://purl.org/vocab/
Wahlöö, Per relationship/lifePartnerOf

17. McBain, Ed
Mankell, Henning
http://purl.
org/vocab/
relationship/
influencedBy
http://purl.
org/vocab/
relationship/ Sjöwall, Maj
influencedBy
http://purl.org/vocab/
Wahlöö, Per relationship/lifePartnerOf
http://vocab.org/relationship/.html

18. An aside
• linked data is often confused with the
concept of ‘LinkedOpenData’
• linked data, but with an ideological view that
data should be open and freely available for
anyone to reuse without restrictions
• much of the data that’s claimed to be LOD is
infact data where the owner has omitted to
post a licence governing its reuse
• most of the truly open data is often data
produced by the public sector

19. An aside
• linked data is often confused with the
concept of ‘LinkedOpenData’
• linked data, but with an ideological view that
data should be open and freely available for
anyone to reuse without restrictions
• much of the data that’s claimed to be LOD is
infact data where the owner has omitted to
post a licence governing its reuse
• most of the truly open data is often data
produced by the public sector
http://lod-cloud.net/

20. Linking data
• linking depends on shared entities
• we need to be sure we are really talking about
the same thing – not just two people with the
same name, but actually the same contributor
• unambiguous identifiers
• controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and clear,
shared semantics based on shared data models
• linked data needs careful data modelling,
and a concern for semantics and identity –
and it’s technically challenging. There’s a
steep learning curve

21. Linked data challenges
• linked data contains no provenance
• metadata licensing is often unclear
• needs shared persistent identifiers –but much
of the current linked data activity is
experimental and lacks sustainability
• poor legacy data – we’re still struggling with
the schema-led approach…
• and where’s my record gone?

22. Linked data promise
• just another way of expressing the same data
• book metadata is already ‘data with links’
• linked data removes the limits of ‘the record’
• but optimised for machines, not people
• Tim Berners-Lee’s ‘semantic web’
• allows machines to ‘browse’ for other data – so
if your book is set in Sweden, then it can
automatically be linked to other sources of data
about Sweden or to other Swedish things
• could change the game of ‘discoverability’

26. graham@editeur.org
www.editeur.org