That’s something we’ve been doing, yes.

Among the most useful summaries I have found for Linked Data, generally, and in relationship to libraries, specifically. After first reading it, got to hear of the acronym LODLAM: “Linked Open Data for Libraries, Archives, and Museums”. Been finding uses for this tag, in no small part because it gets people to think about the connections between diverse knowledge-focused institutions, places where knowledge is constructed. Somewhat surprised academia, universities, colleges, institutes, or educational organisations like schools aren’t explicitly tied to those others. In fact, it’s quite remarkable that education tends to drive much development in #OpenData, as opposed to municipal or federal governments, for instance. But it’s still very interesting to think about Libraries and Museums as moving from a focus on (a Web of) documents to a focus on (a Web of) data.

The “Open World Assumption” is central to this post and to the actual shift in paradigm when it comes to moving from documents to data. People/institutions have an alleged interest in protecting the way their assets are described. Even libraries. The Open World Assumption makes it sound quite chaotic, to some ears. And claims that machine learning will solve everything tend not to help the unconvinced too much. Something to note is that this ability to say something about a third party’s resource connects really well with Web annotations (which do more than “add metadata” to those resources) and with the fact that no-cost access to some item of content isn’t the end of the openness.