Semantic Library

Underlying the technology, the standards, the markup, the startups, there has to be a strong sense of purpose behind websites and web projects for them to be successful and used. For libraries, in the past that was putting the catalogue online, now it’s making the catalogue and its data open. For bloggers, it’s dissemination of ideas, and for others, building a community of practice [PDF].

Some of the most interesting developments online are projects aimed at social change, technology for non-profits, and information for advocacy. Whether these projects aim to persuade, organise, raise awareness, or raise funds they have something in common - using the web for a purpose.

So what’s this got to do with the Semantic Web?

On the surface of it, the Semantic Web is about creating relationships between data. This gives data flexibility and strength. Open data enables raw research information, records and more to be shared and built upon by others. Because of the power of data, many not-for-profit designers and activists are putting their energy into developing mashups and visualising information. NetSquared is currently running a mashup competition to show how they can be used for social change. The Tactical Technology Collective prepared a booklet on Information Visualization for Advocacy to show the power of presenting information as images, not just static tables and bar charts. Expect to see more projects of this type as the ability to link and build on data with RDF and query data with SPARQL and other Semantic Web tools takes off.

Tools for Change

Ethan Zuckerman has posted notes from his talk at ETech, a talk that was entitled The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism. It’s a fascinating look at all aspects of activism online, from using Google Maps to track the whereabouts of government aircraft, to pointing out injustices in land ownership; to Twitter and SMS to connect people and spread news fast. CNN’s Inside Africa program recently covered the impact of mobile phones in Africa for social organising, sharing information, and helping in the fight against HIV/AIDS by reminding people when to take their medication.  This is what we can do today. With the ability to exchange data and create meaning, these tools will be even more dynamic with the Semantic Web.

Another fascinating article looking at the hype and reality of web 2.0 and the promise of the social web for activism and change is Trebor Scholz’s article in this month’s First Monday, Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0. Scholz concludes -

By defining today’s Social Web solely through the lens of business, however, we loose track of all that, which the Web could be. Re–imagine the Social Web as a place for unmarketed, non–mainstream projects that caters to all needs of those who inhabit it.

Purpose + the Semantic Web

One of the great things about the Semantic Web is that it has the ability to provide so many services and benefits to research, data, activism, and advocacy, and to link researchers with readers and librarians, and so on. But it is important to ensure that this focus is emphasised as the Semantic Web continues to develop.

I became interested in the Semantic Web because of its potential for eResearch. As librarians, we assist researchers with databases and datasets made by others (often commercially) all the time. What role might we play in helping researchers to create their own? And how will the outputs of this data, research and social change interact online in the future? How can we help to guide and shape these processes?

Karen Coyle answers the four FRBR questions and says,

The use of FRBR has the potential to allow us to move library data into the nascent semantic web. We could even be visible pioneers in that area, given the huge amount of carefully crafted data that we have in our databases. The semantic web functionality promises a much richer information environment than our library catalogs provide today, and one in which library data can interact seamlessly with the entire Web.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be a pioneer? Check out the FRBR blog for more of Karen’s answers and previous participants.

The UBC Health Library has added a page on the Semantic Web to their wiki. Check it out for a links to resources on the concept and a great section on why health librarians should care -

The semantic web could potentially be a place where much of the knowledge of librarians and computer scientists could be built into the web itself. What’s remarkable about semantic technologies is that they will not affect the look or feel of our ‘web experiences’, and may perform tasks without our end-users’ knowledge.

An exciting prediction!

Depending on where you live or which experts you listen to, we’re either nearing the end of Winter/Summer or already in Autumn/Spring. Whichever way, the year is still young, as is this blog, so here’s a wrapup of discussion about the semantic web, RDF, metadata and libraries from around the biblioblogosphere in 2008 to give you a sense of where we’ve been and where we’re headed -

Will I need to understand the semantic web in 2008? One Big Library, January 3 2008

Which leads me to wondering - is now the time for all good library hackers to come to grips with the state of the SemWeb art? Have we crossed some tipping point?

How Do I Create A Semantic Web Site? Maison Bisson, January 9 2008

RDF is certainly among the acronyms most identified with Semantic Web, but it’s not necessarily as complex as all that, and there are things we can do today to answer the question. Among the best of them (and one that will always deliver value), is to make sure our sites are marked up meaningfully. I know this sounds simple, but it’s surprising how few data-rich library sites take advantage of it.

Would the Real “Dublin Core” Please Stand Up? Disruptive Library Technology Jester, February 19 2008

So what is “Dublin Core”? Is it the abstract model? Is the set of terms that can be used as predicates in RDF expressions? Is it the legacy 15-element XML-based standard for describing digital objects? Count me in among those want more in trying to figure this out….

Stuart Wiebel replies, with a good summary of each including semantics.

Tim Berners-Lee and DataPortability, Library Support Staff, February 29 2008

Commenting on the Talis podcast with Tim Berners-Lee, Rick Mason notes,

Libraries are still playing catch-up in the social data area. We are starting to implement tagging and book recommendations, but we are not all that far along with implementing things. What this quote reminds me is that we should also be keeping an eye towards making it easy to export data out of our systems.

Which bibliobloggers seem to be most interested in the semantic web? There should be no surprise that at this stage cataloguers, systems librarians and those working closely with data are talking about it more than those working the reference desk. Semantic Web development is still in the realm of schemas and RDF, FRBR/RDA rather than end-user ’stuff’ that we can promote to library users.

But if you are a mostly reference-sometimes techie person (like me!) the time to be involved is now so that we can have a hand in developing what ever the stuff for users is going to be. Now is when we need to start identifying needs and problems that might be solved by the Semantic Web, rather than waiting for tools to be developed which we try to fit to needs and problems.

Stephen Abram has a short post today about the semantic web, linking to a post over at ReadWriteWeb. What is most interesting about this post though is not Stephen’s post (sorry Stephen!) but the comment left below it by Mark Andews. In part, Andrew says -

We’re so far behind the curve that, by the time we get some sense of Web 3.0 it will already have been surpassed. I wonder if we in LibraryLand are even aware that the Singularity is near?

As I mention in the About page of this blog, much of the technologies that are a part of the semantic web or web 3.0 really aren’t new, and the URL to the W3C’s Semantic Web Activity says it all - 2001. So in that sense, I agree with Mark. Librarians have often been behind the 8-ball, but equally they’ve been incredibly innovative but unknown outside of libraries.

But why is it that libraries are perceived to be behind the times when it comes to technological development that we can and should be in integral part of? There’s a number of possibilities to speculate about -

Libraries are (rightly) focused on services

Until now, outside of enterprises and large scale computing, the sematic web has not really been aimed at the end user. It’s only been in the last few months that sites like Twine and Freebase have emerged, and they’re still very much beta. Now that services are starting to emerge, perhaps we will see more development in libraries. Of course, Talis have been working steadily on this for some time.

There’s not enough labs in libraries

Often in libraries, we don’t really know what others are developing or thinking about until we see the finished product. And that might be an unveiling of a new product at a conference, or a blog post. And that might be a year or more after the library started developing that new service or technology. Some libraries are now taking the great step of setting up library labs where they share development work. I think this fosters a good sense of creativity and friendly competition “hey, they’re working on mashups, maybe we should look at that too!” Networking with other librarians and sharing developments is one thing, but opening up your development process and documentation is another entirely. Here are a few good examples -

National Library of Australia Library Lab - their lab focuses on using Lucene for bibliographic data
NYPL Labs - “process behind the products”
and many more

We need better consortia?

While libraries can do a lot on their own on the local level, there’s an obvious need to be involved at a higher level where more people and more resources accelerates development. But who would do this? OCLC? Or is there a better way (surely there is)? Maybe getting together with non-librarians more regularly? Check out the listing for semantic web at meetup.com and see if there is a group near you.

Whatever the reason, while it’s taken a while for libraries to investigate the semantic web, interest and discussion about it is definitely increasing, so it surely won’t be long before we start to see some semantic-based library services.