Archive for the ‘Museums’ Category

SPARQL end-point of data.euorpeana.edu

Friday, December 21st, 2012

SPARQL end-point of data.euorpeana.edu

From the webpage:

Welcome on the SPARQL end-point of data.europeana.eu!

data.europeana.eu currently contains open metadata on 20 million texts, images, videos and sounds gathered by Europeana. Data is following the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Data is described the Resource Description Framework (RDF) format, and structured using the Europeana Data Model (EDM). We give more detail on the EDM data we publish on the technical details page.

Please take the time to check out the list of collections currently included in the pilot.

The terms of use and external data sources appearing at data.europeana.eu are provided on the Europeana Data sources page.

Sample queries are available on the sparql page.

At first I wondered why this was news because: Europeana opens up data on 20 million cultural items appeared on 12 September 2012 in the Guardian

I assume the data has been in use since its release last September.

If you have been using it, can you comment on how your use will change now that the data is available as a SPARQL end-point?

Posted in Library, Museums, RDF, SPARQL | No Comments »

Europeana opens up data on 20 million cultural items

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

Europeana opens up data on 20 million cultural items by Jonathan Gray (Open Knowledge Foundation):

From the post:

Europe‘s digital library Europeana has been described as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the sprawling web estate of EU institutions.

It aggregates digitised books, paintings, photographs, recordings and films from over 2,200 contributing cultural heritage organisations across Europe – including major national bodies such as the British Library, the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum.

Today [Wednesday, 12 September 2012] Europeana is opening up data about all 20 million of the items it holds under the CC0 rights waiver. This means that anyone can reuse the data for any purpose – whether using it to build applications to bring cultural content to new audiences in new ways, or analysing it to improve our understanding of Europe’s cultural and intellectual history.

This is a coup d’etat for advocates of open cultural data. The data is being released after a grueling and unenviable internal negotiation process that has lasted over a year – involving countless meetings, workshops, and white papers presenting arguments and evidence for the benefits of openness.

That is good news!

A familiar issue that it overcomes:

To complicate things even further, many public institutions actively prohibit the redistribution of information in their catalogues (as they sell it to – or are locked into restrictive agreements with – third party companies). This means it is not easy to join the dots to see which items live where across multiple online and offline collections.

Oh, yeah! That was one of Google’s reasons for pulling the plug on the Open Knowledge Graph. Google had restrictive agreements so you can only connect the dots with Google products. (I think there is a name for that, let me think about it. Maybe an EU prosecutor might know it. You could always ask.)

What are you going to be mapping from this collection?

Posted in Archives, Data, Dataset, Europeana, Library, Museums | 1 Comment »

Linked Data in Libraries, Archives, and Museums

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

Linked Data in Libraries, Archives, and Museums Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) Spring/Summer 2012, Volume 24, no. 2/3 http://dx.doi.org/10.3789/isqv24n2-3.2012.

Interesting reading on linked data.

I have some comments on the “discovery” of the need to manage “diverse, heterogeneous metadata” but will save them for another post.

From the “flyer” that landed in my inbox:

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of a special themed issue of the Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) magazine on Linked Data for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. ISQ Guest Content Editor, Corey Harper, Metadata Services Librarian, New York University has pulled together a broad range of perspectives on what is happening today with linked data in cultural institutions. He states in his introductory letter, “As the Linked Data Web continues to expand, significant challenges remain around integrating such diverse data sources. As the variance of the data becomes increasingly clear, there is an emerging need for an infrastructure to manage the diverse vocabularies used throughout the Web-wide network of distributed metadata. Development and change in this area has been rapidly increasing; this is particularly exciting, as it gives a broad overview on the scope and breadth of developments happening in the world of Linked Open Data for Libraries, Archives, and Museums.”

The feature article by Gordon Dunsire, Corey Harper, Diane Hillmann, and Jon Phipps on Linked Data Vocabulary Management describes the shift in popular approaches to large-scale metadata management and interoperability to the increasing use of the Resource Description Framework to link bibliographic data into the larger web community. The authors also identify areas where best practices and standards are needed to ensure a common and effective linked data vocabulary infrastructure.

Four “in practice” articles illustrate the growth in the implementation of linked data in the cultural sector. Jane Stevenson in Linking Lives describes the work to enable structured and linked data from the Archives Hub in the UK. In Joining the Linked Data Cloud in a Cost-Effective Manner, Seth van Hooland, Ruben Verborgh, and Rik Van de Walle show how general purpose Interactive Data Transformation tools, such as Google Refine, can be used to efficiently perform the necessary task of data cleaning and reconciliation that precedes the opening up of linked data. Ted Fons, Jeff Penka, and Richard Wallis discuss OCLC’s Linked Data Initiative and the use of Schema.org in WorldCat to make library data relevant on the web. In Europeana: Moving to Linked Open Data , Antoine Isaac, Robina Clayphan, and Bernhard Haslhofer explain how the metadata for over 23 million objects are being converted to an RDF-based linked data model in the European Union’s flagship digital cultural heritage initiative.

Jon Voss provides a status on Linked Open Data for Libraries, Archives, and Museums (LODLAM) State of Affairs and the annual summit to advance this work. Thomas Elliott, Sebastian Heath, John Muccigrosso Report on the Linked Ancient World Data Institute, a workshop to further the availability of linked open data to create reusable digital resources with the classical studies disciplines.

Kevin Ford wraps up the contributed articles with a standard spotlight article on LC’s Bibliographic Framework Initiative and the Attractiveness of Linked Data. This Library of Congress-led community effort aims to transition from MARC 21 to a linked data model. “The move to a linked data model in libraries and other cultural institutions represents one of the most profound changes that our community is confronting,” stated Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “While it completely alters the way we have always described and cataloged bibliographic information, it offers tremendous opportunities for making this data accessible and usable in the larger, global web community. This special issue of ISQ demonstrates the great strides that libraries, archives, and museums have already made in this arena and illustrates the future world that awaits us.”

Posted in Archives, Library, Linked Data, Museums | No Comments »

Shadow-Activated QR Code Actually Useful and Cool

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

Shadow-Activated QR Code Actually Useful and Cool Retailer’s sign scannable only at lunch by David Griner.

From the post:

For all the talk of mobile-marketing tech, there remains a pretty wide gap between the potential and the practicality of QR codes. That’s why it’s nice to see this case study from Korea, where a retailer increased lunchtime sales by 25 percent with a shadow-based QR code that’s only scannable in the middle of the day. Emart’s “Sunny Sale” codes are created with three-dimensional displays outside several dozen locations in Seoul. When the sun is at its zenith, the shadows line up, allowing the code to be scanned for access to coupons and online ordering. It’s a smart idea that, in the short term at least, has generated plenty of strong PR and sales. While the wow factor is sure to fade quickly, it’s still a great example of a marketer finding a way to turn QR codes into something actually worth scanning.

From Seoul. No surprise there. Heavy investment in education and technology infrastructure. Some soon-to-be-former technology leaders did the same thing but then lost their way.

If you think of QR codes as a cheap equivalent to a secure RFID tag, you have to “see” it to scan it, it should be more popular than it is. Physical security being the first principle of network security (to “see” the QR code).

Museums could use QR codes (linking into topic maps) to provide information in multiple languages. With sponsors for coupons to local eateries. No expensive tags, networks, sensors, etc.

Posted in Museums, QR Codes | No Comments »

Using an RDF Data Pipeline to Implement Cross-Collection Search

Saturday, March 31st, 2012

Using an RDF Data Pipeline to Implement Cross-Collection Search by David Henry and Eric Brown.

Abstract:

This paper presents an approach to transforming data from many diverse sources in support of a semantic cross-collection search application. It describes the vision and goals for a semantic cross-collection search and examines the challenges of supporting search of that kind using very diverse data sources. The paper makes the case for supporting semantic cross-collection search using semantic web technologies and standards including Resource Descriptive Framework (RDF), SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL ), and an XML mapping language. The Missouri History Museum has developed a prototype method for transforming diverse data sources into a data repository and search index that can support a semantic cross-collection search. The method presented in this paper is a data pipeline that transforms diverse data into localized RDF; then transforms the localized RDF into more generalized RDF graphs using common vocabularies; and ultimately transforms generalized RDF graphs into a Solr search index to support a semantic cross-collection search. Limitations and challenges of this approach are detailed in the paper.

A great report on the issues you will face with diverse data resources. (And who doesn’t have those?)

The “practical considerations” section is particularly interesting and I am sure the project participants would appreciate any suggestions you may have.

Posted in Heterogeneous Data, Museums, Searching, Solr | No Comments »

Everlasting Metadata?

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Everlasting Metadata?

Cynthia Murrell writes of the concern of some groups who want permanent metadata on digital objects:

On the other hand, there’s the law of unintended consequences. There is also the question of “language drift.” If metadata are not up to date, the searcher of the future might not be able to locate the information object because the search term does not match the metadata’s lingo.

And raises the more pragmatic concern of what happens when metadata needs to be corrected?

Curious, do institutions return to digital objects to update them to have the latest metadata?

My impression is that they don’t, but that is based on my experiences with mostly libraries and card catalog data.

Suggestions? Comments for where to look?

A topic map would enable the preservation of the original metadata and updates to that metadata.

Anyone know of digital preservation efforts that plan on preservation of metadata and its updating?

Posted in Library, Metadata, Museums, Preservation | No Comments »

High-Quality Images from the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

High-Quality Images from the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum

From the post:

The Amsterdam Rijksmuseum has made images from its “basic collection” – a little over 103,000 objects – available under a Creative Commons BY 3.0 license which allows you to:

  • Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • Remix — to adapt the work
  • Make commercial use of the work

These images may be used not only for classroom study and research but also for publishing, as long as the museum receives proper attribution. The collections database, in Dutch, is available here. Over 70,000 objects are also cataloged using ICONCLASS subject headings in English; this interface is available here. Click here for an example of the scan quality.

Geertje Jacobs posted a response:

Geertje Jacobs says:
December 14, 2011 at 1:16 am

Thank you for the post on our new API service!

I’d like to add an extra link to the API page. On this page http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/api, you’ll find information about our service (very soon also in English). This is also the place to ask for the key to make use of our data and images!
If there are any questions please contact api@rijksmuseum.nl.

Enjoy our collection!

A very promising resource for use in European history, historical theology and the intellectual history of Europe studies. Coupled with a topic map, geographic, written and other resources can be combined together with the visual resources from the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum.

Posted in Marketing, Museums | No Comments »

The Getty Search Gateway

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

The Getty Search Gateway at all things cataloged

Interesting review of the new search capabilities at the Getty. Covers their use of Solr and some of its more interesting capabilities. Searches across collections and other information sources.

After reading the post and using the site, what would you do differently with a topic map? In particular?

Posted in Lucene, Museums, Solr | No Comments »

Europeana: think culture

Sunday, December 12th, 2010

europena: think culture

More than 14.6 million items from over 1500 organizations.

Truly an embarrassment of riches for anyone writing a topic map about Europe, its history, literature, influence on other parts of the world, etc.

I have just begun to explore the site and its interfaces. Will report back from time to time.

You can create your own tags but creation of an account requires the following agreement:

I understand that My Europeana gives me the opportunity to create tags for any item I wish. I agree that I will not create any tags that could be considered libelous, harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory,infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, pornographic, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable. By clicking this box I agree to abide by this agreement, and understand that if I don’t my membership of My Europeana will be terminated.

Just so you know.

Questions:

  1. Select ten (10) artifacts to be integrated with local resources, using a topic map. Create a topic map. (The artifacts can be occurrences but associations provide richer opportunities.)
  2. Select one of the projects on the Thought Lab page and review it.
  3. What would you suggest as an improvement to the project you selected in #2? (3-5 pages, citations)

Posted in Data Source, Dataset, Museums | No Comments »