DLF Forum 2015

This session is an investigation of the operational impacts on libraries of transitioning to a linked data ecosystem. To date, the majority of linked data efforts and research have focused on the end-user search and discovery benefits of transitioning to linked data. There has been very little investigation of the impact that the transition from MARC, or other field-based approaches to bibliographic work, would have on the daily operations of libraries. Would it be optimal to convert all library operations and data stores to a native triples ecosystem? Or, would it make more sense to maintain a field-based data store and programmatically expose data as triples? In either case, what software would we use to accomplish these tasks, and how would the adoption of this software effect current library vendor relations and internal workflows? Finally, what would be the business impact in terms of work efficiency and librarian training?

Linked Data on the Ground will address these and similar questions by highlighting the work of three initiatives directly engaged in the implementation of linked data native library operations: The UC Davis' IMLS funded BIBFLOW project, the collaborative effort of the National Library of Medicine, George Washing University, and UC Davis to develop and implement a BIBFRAME model for PCC Core bibliographic data, and George Washington University's efforts to create and expose Schema.org micro data. These are amongst the most ambitious efforts yet to integrate linked data into the daily operations of the library; and the experiences and lessons learned from these efforts to deal with linked data on the ground fill an important gap in libraries' understanding of the linked data landscape and help to complete the puzzle of applications of linked data in the library community.