Proposal for Implementing Linked Open Data on Libraries Catalogue

Abstract

The semantic web vision was created in 1999 by Tim Berners Lee. In 2001, the W3C declared the semantic web as the web of shared data. Hence, the realization of this vision requires that current data adopts the new technology in order to be part of the global shift of the current web technology. Library data often encodes some of the most important, unique and authoritative information in the world. Hence very essential that library data speaks the same language as the language spoken by the current web. Bibliographic data stored in traditional record formats has reached its limits of efficiency and utility. Semantic web technology enables users to move from viewing, and managing bibliographic data as records towards managing data as entities (works, people, places, etc.). Moreover, the library data should be treated as part of the web, in other words woven into the web and integrated into the sites and services that library users visit daily, and be part of the linked data vision of the Semantic Web. This research aims to develop a new method for implementing the conversion of bibliographic data to semantic web. It will provide semantic methodologies to link cataloguing records to external Linked Data resources, as Wikipedia and DBpedia. The purpose is to extend the knowledge provided in the cataloguing information and map it to the largest online encyclopaedia the DBpedia. The proposed attempt succeeded in connecting the British Library with the DBpedia through the SPARQL “SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language” queries and succeeded in facilitating the searching, retrieving and connecting data all over the web.