Semantic Library

A clear indication that concept of semantic web and libraries is moving into the mainstream – ALA’s Library Technology Reports is publishing Understanding the Semantic Web: Bibliographic Data and Metadata by Karen Coyle:

The change that libraries will need to make in response must include the transformation of the library’s public catalog from a stand-alone database of bibliographic records to a highly hyperlinked data set that can interact with information resources on the World Wide Web. The library data can then be integrated into the virtual working spaces of the users served by the library.

LTR is a great series, looking forward to seeing reviews of this title and a spike in interest in semantic web in 2010.

We’re well into 2009 now, but there’s always time for trends!

Kathryn Greenhill at Librarians Matter recently compiled a few of the trends that have been making the rounds on library blogs last month.

Cloud, Semantic Web, and Linked Data abound in predictions and in posts emerging through the first two months of the year. It’s looking to be a big year for the Semantic Web in libraries. Add this to the growth in data curation, digital preservation, and eResearch in libraries and there are interesting times ahead. Most of these issues and trends are also mentioned by other contributors to LITA’s 2009 Top Tech Trends.

So what are my predictions for the rest of the year? I’m going to be conservative and just name four. What are yours?

1. The cloud goes desktop

People are getting increasingly worried about losing what they have created. Whether it’s Facebook changing Terms of Service so that even stuff you delete is still owned by them, or Ma.gnolia taking a catastrophic dive and losing most of its data, slowly but surely I think we will start to see people want to be able to synchronise the data they keep online either with other services or with their desktop. This is of course, but one possible use of Data Portability. People are still not aware of the need to back up their desktops, but i think they’re going to want a button to push to back up their cloud.

2. The rise and rise of metadata

Metadata is cool again. Whether you are working in research services, preservation, or reference, metadata helps you find and get stuff and that’s pretty essential to sift through all the crud out there. I’m not talking MARC – I’m talking EAD, PREMIS, SEPIA and much much more. I will be interested to see those that continue to move beyond metadata and start to expose collections beyond their institutions using methods other than OAI-PMH, like linked data.

3. The death of mobile sites

If you are building a specific mobile site or looking at buying a mobile module for your OPAC, stop. The number of sites built specifically for mobile devices has plummeted, not only due to the popularity of the iPhone and other smartphones with browsers, but because it’s a pain to have to build and maintain these sites. The .mobi domain seems to be slipping but m. is gaining hold (eg m.facebook.com). Smart sites are using content negotiation and web standards to display sites on mobile devices, without having to build separate sites to display less information. The mobile web isn’t second-best any more.

4. Librarians get personal

Many of us are now so familiar with blogs and wikis it hardly seems worth mentioning them as shiny new things any more. So what’s next? The library blogosphere has been in a bit of a lull of late, with few major shifts or emerging technologies for everyone to band around. But for me, this is the year more libraries have to get personal. – Not only designing websites that can be personalised, allowing you to save favourite resources, pages and references, but also in building tools for you – LibX for you, not just the institutional level, more subject guides that feature the human librarian that you are talking to behind the email, and even allowing you to personalise the physical space. And this is something I think we can all band around.

A while ago now, Jodi Schneider floated the idea of setting up a Planet for Semantic Web and Libraries. I had some trouble with various flavours of the Planet and Venus software, so instead I put something I’m calling a ‘Planet Lite’ together in Yahoo Pipes. Let me know if you like it! And feel free to suggest additional blogs, I have only listed a few to start.

Semantic Web & Libraries ‘Planet Lite’: JSON and RSS also available.

Last week, I attended Mash Oop North, an one-day unconference about mashups in Huddersfield, UK. It was a great event, which I wrote up in much more detail over at Libraries Interact. One of the best parts of the day was being able to spend some more time with Yahoo! Pipes, and the Planet Lite is the result after much tinkering and experimenting after I got home. Hooray for action-based outcomes!

Allan Cho over at Allan’s Library links to the announcement that semantic search engine site Hakia is seeking submissions of credible websites and sees it both as an opportunity and a cause for concern. Hakia is asking -

Librarians and information professionals can suggest URLs leading to the most credible Websites on a given topic. hakia will process the sites with its proprietary QDEX (Query Detection and Extraction) technology and make them available to Web searchers in credibility-stamped search results.

The press release has been written up over at Mashable and ReadWrite Web. Quite rightly, there are concerns that a company expects us to volunteer for this type of project (though the press release notes, “Each month hakia will give away thank-you prizes, ranging from a book donation to two conference grants, to participants”). Of greater concern, which ReadWrite Web hints at, is the critieria of what constitutes a credible website -

Hakia asks submitters for their professional credentials, but it is not clear if the company will actually check these.

Hakia uses a very strict definition for what makes a site credible. To be included in the index, a site should have gone through a peer review process, not have any commercial bias, and the information should be current. The fact that Hakia insists on only adding peer reviewed sites should greatly enhances the signal-to-noise ratio of the search results.

The Hakia blog outlines in greater detail what they consider a credible website.  If the Semantic Web is going to be a trustworthy web (ie – that meaningful data, links and information can be trusted) the criteria we use to create that trust must be robust. Web credibility is an area I’ve begun researching very recently. As I posted in my query to AIR-L, there is a need to be able to inform people about criteria that goes beyond the surface of ownership, date last updated, presence of peer review. We need criteria that will help individuals to be able to critically evaluate reputation, depth, and quality of peer review.

One of the criterions Hakia is using is -

Source authenticity. The publisher (preferably) should be the owner/producer of the content

What becomes of repositories, data archives, statistical websites etc? The material I archive at DLIST isn’t owned by them, but I implicitly give them a license to host and reproduce it. Another criterion is currency, not everything old is irrelevant, especially when considering research, statements, archives, and government informaation.

Credibility means different things to different groups, interests, and people. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work towards providing tools and metrics for people to evaluate websites for themselves. I remember a plugin project of a few years ago where you could install a toolbar in your browser and when you visited a site that you thought was credible, you clicked a button. That project is no longer, not only because it was time consuming, but because everyone approaches information in different ways. We can agree that there are certain sites that are obviously not credible (eg, the oft-used teaching example, DHMO.org, but the challenge begins when sites are less obviously biased.

This is an area I will be continuing to research. There is a great deal of information available already on approaches to web credibility, here’s a tiny sample of the work being done -

Cooke, A. (2001). A guide to finding quality information on the Internet: selection and evaluation strategies. London: Library Association.

Eastin, M. S. (2007). Toward a Cognitive Developmental Approach to Youth Perceptions of Credibility. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, 29-47.

IFLA/FAIFE. (2008). Internet Manifesto Workshop Manual

Lankes, R. D. (2007). Trusting the Internet: New Approaches to Credibility Tools. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, 101-121.

Credibility projects:

Stanford University Web Credibility research

Credibility and Digital Media @UCSB

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead, gave a presentation on the State of the Semantic Web at this week’s Semantic Web Technologies conference (via: Kingsley Idehen’s Blog Data Space). It’s a great overview of what technologies we have now, what people are working on, how to get involved. But I was pleased to see a slide describing those that are on board with deploying the Semantic Web:

Major communities pick the technology up: digital libraries

Further slides have a few examples of what libraries are doing and uses in academic research. Awesome.