Plenary II. Discovery: Linked Open Data

Abstract

Learn to love linked data through web-centric strategies for sharing metadata, promoting network-level discovery, and interlinking records in new ways. Building on considerable interest in progressive bibliography, RDA, user-contributed metadata and ‘NextGen’ catalogs at two previous RBMS pre-conferences (and the preceding plenary session on linked data), this seminar will demonstrate how linked data improves discovery and description of special collections. The current economic climate amplifies the urgency to find efficiencies in re-usable, shareable, moveable, and flexible units of description. Shared authority information and open data will build bridges over the diminishing intellectual divide between libraries, archives, and museums. It is time to move beyond silos of duplicative, closely-guarded or community-specific records to sustainable community systems. Practical outcomes of the session will include applications of social and linked open data principles to library systems, archival networks and digital libraries.